


Without Monsters

by cold_shadows



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: A little bit of fluff, AH YES, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Billy Hargrove Is A Good Brother, Billy has powers, Hopper saying "language" is my favorite running joke in this whole fic, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Neglect, M/M, Max misses her brother, Slow Burn, So yeah, Some angst, also there is some homophobia in this fic, bite me, but there's also some gore and stuff, cause like fuck that, crying does help guys, i don't think that this fic is super angsty but there is some in there, i say this because almost everything in seasons 1 and 2 happen, lets see, lol there' so much crying in this fic, no beta we die like men, not healthy processing of grief but getting there i hope, not series/season 3 compliant, oh yeah, okay guys im a mess im probs going to forget a tag or two so they will be updated as i go, on that note, so don't try to skip it or anything, sort of canon compliant, steve and billy are childhood friends, the timeline is just shifted a little bit after that, there's not a lot of it and it only comes from neil, they're super unconventional but it still counts, tw will come on a chapter by chapter basis, ummm let see, yeah it's a big part of this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-02-26 17:31:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 20
Words: 63,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23603242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cold_shadows/pseuds/cold_shadows
Summary: What if Hawkins lab wasn't the only lab trying to contact the Upside Down? And what if the other lab getting up to shenanigans also happened to lose a monster or two? What would happen if those monsters then started killing civilians?After her brother dies in an accident, Max Mayfield is moved halfway across the country by her step-father to a tiny town called Hawkins. There, she learns that life isn't as simple as she thought it was, that monsters lurk in unexpected places and some people aren't who she thought they were.A modern au, childhood-friends-to-lovers, slow burn, canon-divergent fic.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove & Maxine "Max" Mayfield, Billy Hargrove & Steve Harrington, Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington, Jonathan Byers/Nancy Wheeler, but like i love our lesbian queens so it's in there, developing Maxine "Max" Mayfield/Lucas Sinclair, very VERY brief Robin Buckley/Heather Holloway
Comments: 69
Kudos: 82





	1. Bitter is the Wind

**Author's Note:**

> Alright loves,  
so the timeline for this fic is shifted just a bit. The first and second attacks happen a year apart, but then another year passes before the third one, instead of the canon eight months. And instead of Max being at the junkyard, Robin is there, having followed Steve when he went to help Dustin. So that's how she is clued into all the Upside Down stuff. Max and the party are all freshmen, and Robin, Jonathan, Nancy, and Billy are all seniors.  
Unbetaed

Max hated the town of Hawkins, Indiana. Billy had spent the first 10 years of his life there, but all he ever said about it was that it was _a hick town in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, Max._ It was Neil’s hometown, a town he claimed a lot more than San Diego, California. They’d all be eating at the dinner table, and Neil would start in on Billy – on his long hair, his earring, who his friends were. _When I was a young man, none of that was allowed! Hawkins made sure we were proper boys. Proper_ men, he’d sneer, and Billy would flinch, and then Max’s mom would change the subject and the rest of dinner would be one long, awkward stretch. Max had never wanted to get out of a situation so much as she’d wanted to at those dinners.  
And then Billy had died, and the family dinners had gone from a hated obligation to downright torture.  
Hawkins was small—small enough to drive from one end to the other in less than thirty minutes, stoplights and all. Main street was really the only part that could be called “busy,” even on a Friday night. Hawkins didn’t really even have a downtown—just a few shops, a hotel, a few restaurants. A diner that everyone Max had come across so far claimed had the best food in all of Indiana. A library that Max had first sneered at but then had become her refuge when Neil had gone off to the bar and Susan into one of her snits.  
Max rode there on her bike, freshly unpacked from the moving trailer. The October air was cool on her face, gently blowing her hair back and lighting it on fire in the setting sun. Max made her way to the Sci-Fi section as soon as she dropped her bike at the entrance—next to several other bikes already there, she noted with some interest. But whoever owned those bikes was nowhere in sight as Max browsed her reading material. They had all the classics: _Dune, 1984, The War of the Worlds._ Max ran her fingers over the books and breathed in the musty air of the library and hurt.  
Billy had loved reading. Had been a little hipster about it, in fact. He’d eschewed all fancy e-readers and apps, going out of his way to buy paper copies at small used bookstores that had so many books on their shelves they were practically breaking under the weight. It was what Billy had taken Max to do the first time Neil had gone into one of his rages—tracked down the nearest bookstore and told Max that she could have whatever she wanted. Max had been nine, and Susan had been married only six months. She had picked out a mystery, and Billy had scoffed and said, “You don’t want that shit.”  
Max had frowned and said, “Yes I do. And you shouldn’t swear.”  
Billy had sneered at her, “I can swear if I want to, _shitbird,_ and no, you don’t want that.” He’d pulled _Dune_ from the shelf and said, “Check that out.”  
Because it had looked interesting, Max had, and was hooked. Cue the next six years of obsession with most things Science Fiction and Fantasy. She had read _the Silmarillion_ and _the Hobbit,_ watched every _Star Wars_ and every episode of _Star Trek_. She’d spent endless hours arguing the differences in _the Lord of the Rings_ movies to the books. A lot of the time with Billy, who liked the books better than the movies, thought Han Solo was hot, and liked Spock best, even if Max had always argued that Kirk was better.  
When Neil had announced that they were moving, Susan had given Max a tentative smile and said, “Maybe this is for the best.” Max had screamed at her that _no, this was not for the best,_ because first Max had lost her brother, and now she was losing her friends. And she wasn’t just losing her brother—no, she was losing every memory of her brother. Every place they’d made home in San Diego was going to be lost, too. Luckily, Neil had not been home for that particular fight.  
The other place Max had visited since coming to this god-forsaken town was the arcade. It had a sign out front proudly proclaiming that it had been in Hawkins since the seventies. The inside looked like it, too. All of the games were basically vintage—and not the kind of vintage where it was new packaging modeled after old-style games. No, these were actual old games, boxy and pixelated and slow, but they were fun. The arcade back home at the mall was nothing like this one. It was new and high tech and basically a bowling alley with a few old gaming machines tucked into one dark corner. Max had recognized three games in the Hawkins arcade from California: Street Fighter, Pac Man, and, strangely, Dig Dug. Max had then proceeded to play Dig Dug the whole afternoon to distract herself. She’d gotten quite the high score.  
She blinked, coming out of her reverie. A stack over, the not-truly-hushed voices of a group of boys carried. They were arguing about something, in that way that only old friends can. Annoyed until something else caught their attention, and then it was forgotten, just like that. For a moment, Max had felt okay. But hearing those voices made her feel so lonely that it cut deep into her chest. Sure, she could text her friends back in San Diego. They all had phones, were all connected via Instagram and Snapchat and even Facebook, though they never used it. The problem was the Max had always preferred to do everything in person. She liked seeing people’s faces, hearing their voices, reading their body language. Otherwise, she was useless when it came to social cues. Max _hated texting._ Hated it enough that she’d prefer a two-minute phone call over a 20-minute text conversation. When he really wanted to annoy her (which was often), Billy would text her, refusing to answer the phone, even when Max would spam it with messages.  
This was all fine and dandy, of course, except for the fact that Max’s friends did not share her disdain for texting. They were perfectly fine with it, which was frustrating because then Max felt like she was the odd one out. And then she felt like she was inconveniencing them when she asked if they could schedule a weekly phone call instead of the just texting whenever, and then she felt _awkward,_ and then she didn’t particularly feel like talking to her friends in San Diego, never mind the fact that she had known them since kindergarten and knew that they wouldn’t mind making some time in their evenings to call her. Long story short, Max was good at the self-isolating game and was now virtually friendless, halfway across the country, in a strange town, and she really, _really_ missed her fucking brother.  
Max left the library without checking anything out, yanking her bike out the pile of other bikes on the front steps a little too violently. When she got home, her mom was in her room, the door shut. Max flopped down on her bed and stared at the ceiling. After a moment, she toed off her shoes and scrambled under the covers, wrapping herself up like a burrito.  
If Billy were still here, she would go annoy him. Max might tug on his hair or ask him to take her to the arcade and he’d sneer and tease her mean-spiritedly until she was too angry to remember that she was lonely. Then she would go out and sit in the back of his Camaro until Neil would notice and make Billy drive her to the arcade.  
The blue-black, 1979 Chevy Camaro was Billy’s pride and joy. He’d found in a junk-yard and fixed it up himself, getting a job at the mechanic shop down the street to save up money to buy the parts. The only reason that it had worked was that the owner of the shop (her name was Cynthia, and, though he would never admit it, Billy loved her like a mother) had taken pity on the skinny 14-year-old kid (who had basically scammed the guy at the junkyard into letting him buy the car in the first place) and had let Billy store the Camaro in the back of the shop and work on it when no one was around. She would even give Billy discounts on parts, if they came through the shop.  
Billy’s mom had been a small-town mechanic in Hawkins when she had met Neil Hargrove. For the first decade of Billy’s life, he’d grown up a wrench monkey, perched on a seat in the back of his mom’s shop while she worked on cars. Her husband was an active-duty marine on the other side of the world, and wasn’t around a lot. Billy had once told Max that the most comforting scent in the world to him was motor oil and gasoline.  
Despite being perpetually dressed in overalls and smeared in grease, Billy’s mom was a very pretty woman. Almost delicate, from what Max could tell from the one small photo that Neil had kept of her on the mantel. Max had caught her mother staring at the photo more than once. There was something ugly in her face that Max hadn’t wanted to think about. _Maybe,_ a small voice in her head whispered, _that’s why she doesn’t interfere._ Because Billy looked _a lot_ like his mother. Enough that Neil had an almost sick expression on his face when Billy stumbled to his room, covered in bruises. Billy’s mom had taken off soon after the Hargrove family had moved to California, forgetting Billy on the way. So Billy was stuck with his dad, and that meant that Max was stuck with Billy.

* * *

The one thing Max decided she hated more than the town of Hawkins was the high school of Hawkins. There was only one, and it was frighteningly small. Back home, Max’s high school had over 3,000 students and was a sprawling building that ate up nearly a whole city block. Hawkins High was located right next to Hawkins Middle, and both those buildings were barely half a city block, Max estimated. Maybe less. She had looked up the population of the school – less than a thousand students. She scowled.  
Max arrived late on her first day, because her mother had slept in, and Max had taken her sweet time waking her up. In California, Billy had driven Max to school, leaving Susan to sleep as late as she wanted (which, some days, was pretty fuckin late). But now that Billy was gone, Susan didn’t exactly have that luxury anymore. Something she’d evidently forgotten, Max mused, as she stared at her mom’s door and wondered how much trouble she’d get in if she just didn’t wake her mom up and blew off her first day of school.  
But Susan had gotten up and hustled Max out the door, scolding her the whole way to school for not getting her up in time. Susan had pulled up the school, given Max a weak smile, and said, “Have a good day, honey.”  
Yeah, like there was any way that Max was going to have a good day. She slammed the door on her way out and stomped all the way to the building. Max was tempted to slam the door to the school, as well, but then thought better of it. The door was too heavy, anyway.  
Max finally found the main office, grumbling about the lack of proper signage in this stupid school, and then stormed inside. She had never really been one to operate on basic societal niceties, like being considerate of noise concerns because _there are students in class, young lady, and they need silence to learn!_  
_Jesus,_ Max thought, rolling her eyes at the lady sitting behind the desk, _what is this, the fifties?_  
Eventually, the lady handed over a variety of papers and called over an aid to take Max to her first class. The aid, looking about two years older than Max’s freshman, gave her a small smile and led her silently down the hall.  
That was how Max ended up in Mr. Clark’s Freshman Advanced Biology first period. He didn’t even let her get away with slipping into a seat at the back unnoticed. Like from a scene from a fucking _eighties movie,_ he made her stand at the front of the class and introduce herself, drumroll from the dorky-looking kid in the front and all. Yeah, her day was going to go fucking great.


	2. Thy Lovers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unbetaed

Here’s the thing—Steve was worried. Not the normal, _Mike get your ass back home it’s 2 am and your mom has a whole fucking search party out looking for you_ worried. This worried was a bone-deep, gut wrenching nausea, and he didn’t know _why._ Well—he did know why, but that didn’t really help. He’d been plenty worried about Billy before. Everything had always turned out alright. But something was telling Steve that this time was different. 

Steve had been best friends with Billy Hargrove since he was five years old. They’d met at the back of Billy’s mom’s shop, one day when Steve’s mom’s car had broken down and they’d had to tow it into the resident mechanic in Hawkins. Billy had been helping his mom by retrieving the tools she asked for and had kicked Steve when Steve was standing on one that he’d needed. It had been the start of a glorious friendship that spanned the country, after Billy had moved when he was ten. They had stayed in touch through phone calls, at first, because the first day without Billy, Steve had cried so hard that his mom had finally called Billy’s and demanded the little boy be put on the phone. After that, Steve’s mom had bought him a cell phone, then shipped one all the way to San Diego, so that Steve and Billy could talk without interrupting _mommy’s time._

So really, for the past eight years, they had been internet friends, but that didn’t mean they weren’t close. In fact, they’d stayed in near constant contact, only going about two days without at least a check-in text. So that was why Steve was worried, because it had been nearly a month without any contact from Billy. No calls, no texts, no updates on social media. Just…radio silence. Steve would be worried that he had done something wrong, except he’d fucked up before, and Billy had forgiven him within 24 hours. Sure, Billy could hold a grudge—just not against Steve.

It was getting to the point where Steve was considering tracking down Neil’s phone number and calling him. _That_ was how desperate Steve was to find out if Billy was okay. And that was pretty fucking desperate.

Steve’s phone rang shrilly through his room and he jolted. He had been awake for a while, but the sound still startled him. Since last year, Steve wasn’t exactly a heavy sleeper anymore. Light filtered through the curtains doing their damnedest to keep it out, falling on ugly wallpaper and a room that was teenager-messy. He cursed Robin. She had been over last night for a little fun (which basically meant Steve got a bottle of expensive-ass scotch from his dad’s cabinet and they shared about half of it before Robin passed out and Steve drove her home) and gossip. It had turned into a _Steve worries about Billy_ session, which had become increasingly common as September had rolled into October. Robin had listened to it only a little despairingly. Her entire friendship with Steve, she had heard about the great Billy Hargrove—all American Cali boy, surfer, and Steve’s best friend. Seriously, their first conversation had been about Billy Hargrove, and nothing had changed since.

Steve fumbled for his phone, throwing his arm out and scrabbling around his bedside table. His hand brushed the back of his phone and he groped until he got a good grip on it.

“Hey, dingus,” Robin’s cheery voice said.

“Robin, what the fuck?” Steve muttered, checking the time. “It’s like, eight in the morning. Why are you calling me so early?”

“Early? Dingus, I’ve been up for three hours already. It’s not early.”

“Yeah, well, just because you decided to take zero hour marching band doesn’t mean that the rest of us have to suffer through it, too, Robin,” Steve snapped, rubbing his eyes. The perks of graduating high school meant that Steve didn’t have to be up until ten, at least.

“Actually, it does.” Robin said. “I have an update on Heather.”

Steve perked up. “Wait, really? What happened?”

Robin updated Steve on the latest happenings in the Hawkins High School Marching Band, in which Heather played flute and Robin played the sousaphone. Robin had spent the past six months mooning over Heather, even dragging Steve to the public pool where Heather worked. Steve had put up with it good naturedly, because Robin put up with Steve talking about Billy, and because he genuinely liked seeing Robin interact with Heather—a little dorky and a lot smart.

After the call with Robin, Steve got dressed. Normally, he made some semblance of effort towards fashion—not as much as Billy, but he liked looking good. But when his panicky obsessing over his best friend’s potential fate was interrupted at eight in the morning, he didn’t really care.

Steve clumped downstairs, feeling like one leg was heavier than the other, to make coffee. He wasn’t particularly caffeine dependent—just like he wasn’t terribly nicotine dependent—but he liked the kick in the morning, especially when his other best friend decided to be obnoxious and wake him up early. Steve leaned against the counter and stared at the cutout in the wall to the glass doors and through them, to the pool. Serene water drifted in the slight breeze. Goose bumps rose on his skin, prickling against his clothes. He remembered Barb there, sitting with quiet dejection. He remembered Nancy’s frantic search the next day, how one minute she had been laughing with Steve and the next off with Jonathan Byers, pointing guns at people and swinging baseball bats like she meant to hurt someone with them.

He checked his calendar on his phone. Underneath “today” was the heading PICK UP DUSTIN. Steve sighed. Dustin had gotten ahold of his phone again.

Dustin had an annoying habit of entering in all the party’s needs when it came to rides. He would create detailed schedules down to the minute about where everyone needed to be and who Steve needed to pick up in what order. If given enough time, Dustin would even include a route for Steve to take, McDonald’s stops and all. Steve would be more mad about it, except he didn’t really have anything better to do than play personal chauffeur, so he let it go.

Steve had nothing else to do until 2:30, when he had to go the school to pick the boys up and drive them to the Byers’. The boys were organizing a campaign for the weekend, and were getting to the stage in the process where they needed everyone present. El should technically be there too, but Hopper was understandably stricter than everyone else. Unless she pulled a miracle out of her ass (which, Steve considered, wasn’t entirely impossible: this _was_ El, the girl with literal _superpowers_), it was unlikely she was going to be there. Steve sighed, checked the time on his phone. Sipped his coffee, watched the pool. Tried to contain the twisting in his chest. Checked the time again. _Might as well go watch TV._

* * *

Steve parked his Beamer two blocks from the school, around the corner. All up and down the street, bored parents lounged in their idling cars, waiting for the minute when the bell would ring and their children would stream out of the school and to their cars. Steve had never felt older and younger than he did right now. Motherly, because in many senses of the word, he was parent to some of the kids. He took them to and from school, watched them to make sure that some of them (looking at you, Dustin) didn’t manage to blow themselves up, fed and watered them while they were in his care, and genuinely wished to impart good life lessons on them.

But he was also a teenager, who hadn’t truly been raised by his own parents since he had hit middle school, and sometimes, the panic of knowing that he could be irredeemably fucking the party up with something so accidental as a few offhand words made him freeze up. This panic was a silent companion to his other forms of anxiety: the one that forced him out of bed at night, pacing in front of the glass doors and waiting, just _waiting,_ for some monster to peek out of the woods; the one that kept him clinging to his phone even during tests just in case Billy called because Steve may be all the way across the country, but he could still help, dammit; the one that threw him into frantic movement the second he got a call from the party, even if there was no rational reason that they would be in trouble. He felt wearied, like he’d been watching the rollercoaster of his life for too long, and now that he was actually in the thick of it, he didn’t know how to get off.

Steve pulled out his phone and checked his texts. Nothing. Flat out _nothing._

Panic gripped his throat. He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to block out the feeling of his lungs constricting, like someone had pulled all the air out through his mouth. He clenched his hands, feeling the skin of his palms under his nails. Billy was alright. Billy had to be alright. If something had happened to him Steve would—he didn’t know, but it wouldn’t be good.

A sharp knock on the window jerked his eyes open.

Dustin was leaning down, a knuckle still raised to tap. “Hey, asshole. Open the doors.”

Steve reached out and popped the locks. The party spilled in, Mike talking animatedly to Lucas, who was nodding along. Will smiled at Steve, who tried to smile back.

“Guess what happened today,” Dustin said, as soon as he was in the passenger seat.

Steve looked at him. “Put on your seatbelt and you can tell me.” He started the car and checked his mirrors before pulling out.

Dustin did as he was told and opened his mouth to answer when Lucas jumped in. “We got a new student today.”

“Hey!” Dustin twisted in his seat. “I was telling him!”

“So?” Lucas asked. “You were being too slow.”

“I was not being too slow!” Dustin snapped back.

The sharp volume of their squabbling crowded the car. Steve stopped at a stop sign and listened to the boys bicker. He knew any other kid his age would be pretty pissed off about being saddled with giving rides to four freshmen who were all nerdy enough to know each other’s D&D stats off the top of their heads, but the truth was, Steve didn’t mind. It relaxed him, having them all there in one place. Having them within eyesight, where he knew they were safe. And, if he was being honest, it gave him something to hold onto. After the events last year, Steve had been drifting, awash in an ocean of desolate nightmares and a big, empty house.

The truth was, Steve was lonely. Had been lonely, since he was a little kid. It was a notable reason why Steve had been such good friends with Billy in the first place. His parents weren’t around much; they had nannies for Steve when he was kid, but after he entered high school, they gave up the pretense of being parents entirely and had left him alone in their massive fucking house for weeks at a time. They usually only dropped by for a few days before going somewhere else. Steve saw his Dad more than his mom, simply because she had a second home in Italy that she stayed at for months on end. At least Steve’s Dad dropped by between business trips. Usually it was to tell Steve what a disappointment he was, but still.

Dustin’s voice rose and Steve shouted, “Hey, _hey!_ I can hear you, dipshits.”

Mike, Lucas, and Dustin glowered at him, identical pouts on their faces. Steve took a deep breath. “Why don’t you assholes just tell me about the new student, huh?”

They were quiet for a moment as a silent fight went down about who got to tell Steve.

It appeared that Dustin won out, because he turned to Steve and said, “Her name is _Max._”

Steve looked at him. “So?”

Dustin looked at him like he was stupid. _“So?_ What do you mean, _so?_ Max! As in Madmax?”

Steve looked at him and Dustin looked back. “…like the movie?”

“No!” Dustin groaned. “Like the player! The guy who beat my high score on Dig Dug! Like _that_ Madmax!”

“Oh. Wait, are you sure they’re the same person? I mean, Hawkins is small, Dustin, but we have to have a few Maxes roaming about,” Steve said.

“Yes, I’m sure!” Dustin said. “If it was a Max who had already lived in Hawkins, then they’d have already beat my highscore. Max is new to town, _and_ she skates. Of course, it’s her.”

Steve frowned. “Why is skating relevant to this conversation?”

“Because skating is cool, and Dig Dug is cool, _duh._”

Steve regarded Dustin with a long look. “That is the weakest link, ever.”

“No, it’s not,” Dustin said, sounding horribly offended.

“Yes, it is,” Mike retorted, and they were off again.

Steve felt a small smile touch his lips, letting the sounds of the party’s quarreling fill him. The pitch of their voices rose and fell, in that way that siblings argue. It wasn’t really the topic that mattered, just that they were right. But as soon as something bigger happened, something that really mattered, the argument would be dropped like a hot potato. Even thought he was an only child, Steve had seen Mike and Nancy do the very same thing enough.

“Oh, my god,” Dustin muttered, twisting in his seat to get a better look at Mike. “Why are you so wrong?”

Steve took a deep breath in, stretching his lungs until they could be filled no more, and then let it out. This was the only time when the feelings of loneliness rescinded enough for Steve to breathe. This, and when he was talking to Billy.

The Byers lived about 10 minutes out of the town proper and about five more minutes from the school. Steve pulled up next to Joyce’s Pinto and Jonathan’s ’71 Ford LTD. It was a junker, but one of those old cars that had enough of the muscle-car look that it could be considered vintage-chic. Jonathan was driving it because it had been the cheapest car they could find. The kids spilled into the yard as the door opened. Joyce stepped out in time to be nearly bowled over by the four boys.

“Boys!” she laughed, “be _careful.”_

“Yes, Mrs. Byers,” they chorused, already heading for the table in the kitchen.

Joyce turned to Steve and smiled. “Steve, thanks for driving. Come on in.”

Steve smiled back at her. There was something about Joyce Byers that was comforting. She was the mother that he never had, maternal and caring in equal measure. He liked that she always had a hearth and a home for any kid that needed it, even if just for a little while. Steve wished, desperately, that he had been friends with Jonathan growing up. That he had been welcome at the Byers’ table when there wasn’t one waiting for him back at home. Instead, he’d gone and made friends with Tommy H.

“Nance here, too?” he asked.

Joyce nodded. “She and Jonathan just got here.”

The living room was crowded with bodies as Steve stepped inside. Mike had claimed the couch and Dustin and Lucas were busy fighting over the loveseat. Will was standing off to the side, watching and laughing.

“Y’know,” Joyce said, walking by. “You could just share the couch.”

Steve walked past the living room and down the hall, following the faint voices drifting out of Jonathan’s room. When he reached it, he saw Nancy explaining something to Jonathan, her face lit up as she spoke. She gestured wildly with her pen, hair tumbling around her shoulders, voice full of exasperated agitation. Jonathan said something that was gently teasing and Nancy gaped at him, whacking his arm. Steve smiled. He liked seeing Nancy happy, even if it wasn’t with him.

Steve spent the evening at the Byers’ sprawled on the couch next to Will, half listening to the kids plan their campaign and half talking to Nancy, who sat with Jonathan in the kitchen. She was complaining to him about an assignment for her AP Lit class, voice half-groan and half-boast (though she would never admit it, she was proud to keep up in a class that was famous for its failing grades). She was near-shouting, helping with the already loud din.

Steve smirked at her, “See, I don’t have to deal with that class anymore.”

Nancy glowered. “I know, you asshole. You don’t have to gloat.”

“Yeah, but what is the point of being older if I can’t gloat about it?”

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t know, giving my brother and his friends a ride?”

“Wow, you make me sound like a loser who has no plans for his future,” Steve said, placing a hand over his heart.

“That’s because you are,” Nancy returned, and Steve gasped.

“You wound me! Nancy Wheeler, my very own ex-girlfriend! How could you do this to me?” Steve sprawled half-across Will, one wrist on his forehead in a mock swoon.

Nancy giggled, “You are an idiot, Steve Harrington.”

The door opened with a frigid gust and Hopper and El entered the Byers abode. Hopper looked grim, thick mustache drooping over the firm set of his lips.

“Hop,” Steve said, straightening up. “We didn’t think you’d make it.”

“I didn’t think so, either,” he said, scanning the room. “Where’s Joyce?”

Joyce rounded the corner and smiled. “What’s wrong?”

Hopper exhaled a tired breath and scrubbed his hands over his face. “I have an announcement to make. Everyone into the living room.”

They crowded around Hopper, who evicted Dustin and Lucas from the loveseat. “Guess what I found, today?”

“What?”

Hopper smiled that smile that wasn’t happy at all. “A demodog.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so APPARENTLY I have some thoughts about cars. Of course, I had to keep the Camaro, but I also think that it makes sense to keep Joyce's Pinto and Jonathan's LTD because they're old and Hawkins isn't big enough to have like, a thriving used car market, so I feel like the cars that you could buy really cheap would be something real old, like from the seventies. Now, on the other end of the spectrum, is Steve's Beamer. In the show, the BMW is like, top-of-the-line expensive. It's expensive enough that it was probably a gift for like a birthday, or something. It's also an incredibly ugly car, so I was thinking that Steve's car would be updated to a mid-2010's BMW sedan. Still maroon, tho. I also think Hop's car would be something like, a mid-1990's Bronco, or some other durable model like that. Something that looks close to the show, but still updated.  



	3. The Blood Runs Crazy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is from Neko Case's "The Dirty Knife." Great song, you should go check it out.  
As always, this chapter is unbetaed.

They all stared at him with a dumbfounded silence for a solid 30 seconds.

A demodog…

Steve thought back to last October, when they had attacked. He thought about clutching Dustin so hard he thought he’d leave bruises, about the momentary press of firm muscle overlaid by slime as the demodogs rushed by them, battering them like water in a stream. He thought about those tunnels, about how they were dank and dark and like nothing he’d ever experienced. He thought about how he had been prepared to never walk out of there alive, if it meant the party did. His stomach flipped sharply and his breath went uneven. He was not ready to go back to that. Not ready to go back to checking his pool, the shadows in the trees, each window lock twice before he went to bed. Steve closed his eyes and pressed his palms to them, until it hurt. He _so_ did not need all this shit on top of everything else, right now.

Joyce frowned. “Wait—this, this doesn’t make sense. Are you sure that it was a demodog?”

Hopper made a derisive sound in the back of his throat. “Am I _sure_ that it was a demodog? Yes, I am sure that it was a demodog! What else would it have been, crazy old Jenkins stumbling home from the bar—or how about Dustin’s cat? Or—or—maybe it was _your_ dog, Joyce.” He gave her a look that said, _are you serious? Yes, I am sure it was a demodog._

Joyce scrubbed her brow. “But El closed the gate. You said those ‘dogs that were coming to attack you died, Hop. How could it be a demodog?”

Hopper closed his eyes, his mouth set in a line. He looked tired, like he always did; like it wasn’t sleep he needed, but something fundamentally lacking from his soul. As though a weight was tearing him apart from the inside. Steve knew that weight, knew the feeling all too well. How it crawled inside you until you couldn’t help but house it, embrace it, greet it as your oldest friend. Steve had thought that El would help, because she had a way of doing that, of pulling people together where they had not been together before. Of finding the cracks and sewing them up, smoothing them over until you could barely tell they were there at all. But Steve had a feeling the demodog wandering around might be putting some strain on those stress points.

“Look,” Hopper said. “I don’t know how it got here or if there are more, just that it’s there and it needs to be disposed of.”

“Great,” Mike said. “El and I can just mosey on over—”

Three voices at once interrupted him at once.

“NO, you will not be taking El anywhere—”

“Mike, you will not be going to fight a _demodog—”_

“No way, dipshit, you’re staying here, where it’s safe—”

“But—but—it’s _El!_ It’ll be perfectly safe; we’ll just go and she’ll slam the ‘dog against a tree and I’ll haul it back—”

Hopper rose to his full height and interrupted forcefully, “No, you are not going anywhere. Especially not to fight demodogs, do you understand me?”

“But—”

_“Do you understand me?”_

Mike glowered at him. “Yes,” he muttered.

Hopper sighed, relaxing a bit. “Good.”

“So, what _are_ we going to do?” Nancy asked, creeping closer to Jonathan.

Hopper moved towards the kitchen, muttering “do you have a map?” to Joyce on the way.

Joyce made a noise of confirmation and turned in that harried way of hers, like she couldn’t quite do it fast enough, as though all the energy in her body was directed towards one thing and it wanted _out._

She pulled open a drawer and grabbed a map, hustling back towards the table. She dropped it in front of Hop, who spread it out and smoothed out the creases with one firm swipe of his hand.

“Alright,” Hopper said, pointing at a point southwest of Hawkins, near the lab. “This is where El and I saw the demodog.”

“That’s near the lab,” Steve said, stomach twisting a little bit. If they were back on their bullshit, Steve thought, he was going to—

“Yeah,” Hopper said. “Tomorrow, I’ll check out the lab. See if Owens hasn’t gone all mad scientist and decided to do something incredibly stupid.” His voice took on a near-snarl then, as though he almost wanted Owens to be doing something with the Upside Down so that Hop could beat his face in. Steve almost agreed with him. At least if it was Owens, that meant that they knew what they were dealing with. That they could shut it down.

“Now, here’s what we are going to do,” Hopper continued. “We are going to split into patrols. Everyone goes in pairs, everyone takes phones. Keep my phone number pulled up so all you have to do is press call. You see a demodog, you report it to me first _before_ you go after it. Got it? Before. Not after. We are going to do this smart, people. No running off into the tunnels and deciding that you’re a hero to do stupid shit.” He glared at Mike and the rest of the party, except for maybe Will. They all glared back.

“Now, since Nancy and Steve live the closest together, they will be patrolling together.” He gestured at the northeast corner of the map, around Loch Nora and the other upper-to-middle class neighborhoods. “We’ll do it in rings, going from the edge of town towards the center.”

Steve and Nancy exchanged a glance. He could tell she was a little disappointed, but knew that it made sense. Steve had to admit it was a little strange that Nancy was not paired with Jonathan. They had always been together the last times that the Upside Down had decided to stir up trouble: they fought the Demogorgon together (with Steve, but still. Most of the planning had just been the two of them), and then they made that recording together. They had even gone together to get the Mindflayer out of Will. They were a monster fighting pair; it just made sense.

But Jonathan lived a whole twenty minutes from Nancy’s—they were across town from each other. It didn’t make much sense for one of them to drive over to the other’s house just for patrols.

“Jonathan, you and El will be going out together.”

Jonathan raised his head, surprise evident on his face. El was grinning, something dangerously close to excitement on her face. “I can help?”

Hopper sighed. “Yes, squirt, you can help. But—” he held up a restraining finger, “—this is only because you have your telekinesis. If something—anything—goes wrong, you get out of there. I don’t care if the demodogs are about to eat the Mayor. _You get out of there,_ you understand?” El nodded, seriously. Hopper turned to the group at large. “That goes for all of you patrolling, not just El. If something goes wrong, you run. No heroics, got it?” They all nodded.

“Good. Jonathan and El will be patrolling this area—” He gestured to the southwestern part of Hawkins. It was nearest to the lab, but not truly _close_ to it. It was a wide range that included Hopper’s cabin and the Byers’ house, along with several farms.

He assigned Lucas and Dustin to an area in the southeast, and then huffed and shifted his weight. Hopper’s eyes scanned over the map, studying the northwest corner. No one really lived over in that neighborhood; everyone else lived to the east.

“I’ll patrol that,” Steve volunteered.

Hopper looked at him.

Steve met eyes. “I’ll patrol the northwest. I graduated, so it’s not like I have a lot to do. Plus, I live in Loch Nora. I’m closest to there, anyway.”

“Sweetie, are you sure?” Joyce asked, coming toward him. “You already have an area to patrol.”

“Yeah,” Steve shrugged.

“But you don’t have a partner,” Hopper said.

“Look, I’ll do it in the daytime. I’ll take my phone and my bat. I’ll park my car in the middle so I’ll have the least distance to go should I have to run. It makes sense, Hop. The rest of you have obligations to get to. You and Joyce have jobs and the kids have school. I make the most sense.”

Hopper stared at him. Steve stared back, waiting for him to give in. Steve knew he was right, and knew that Hopper knew he was right. For all that the Chief wanted to protect everyone, he didn’t have superpowers. He needed someone to rely on and Steve made the most sense. Hop growled and turned. “Fine, but you call me _as soon_ as you see on of those hell dogs, okay? None of this, ‘the adults don’t need to know’ shit.”

Steve held up his hands. “Okay, sure.”

“Great,” Hopper said, folding the map back up.

“Wait—wait,” Mike said. “Why don’t _I_ get to patrol anything?”

“Cause your sister’s already patrolling, kid.”

Mike spluttered. “But—but Dustin and Lucas are patrolling! And El! I’m the only one left out!”

“No, you’re not,” Will interrupted.

Mike looked at him. “Yeah, but Will…”

Will stared at him, as if daring him to finish that sentence.

Mike exhaled. “I just don’t get it! Why do Dustin and Lucas get to patrol and I don’t?”

“Because you live in an area that’s already being patrolled, honey,” Joyce explained. “Hopper doesn’t want Lucas and Dustin out either, but he doesn’t exactly get a choice with them.”

“So? Steve can just drive me to an area for patrolling. In fact, I can be his partner for the northwest!”

“No, Mike,” Steve said. “You have school.”

“Fuck school!” Mike snapped.

“Language,” Hopper said.

Mike stared at Steve, like, _ help me out here!_

Steve shrugged. “Sorry, kid. I’m with Hop on this one. If you don’t have to be out, you aren’t going out. I’ll be fine on my own.”

Mike gave him the most betrayed look he could muster. “But—”

“That’s _enough,”_ Hopper put in. “The decision is final, and there’s nothing you can say to change that.”

Mike gaped, spreading his hands.

“No, kid.” Hopper turned away.

Nancy and Jonathan walked back to the living room, followed by Will. Lucas and Dustin broke into excited plans for what they’d do when patrolling, looking more like kids who just got promised they could go to the fair rather than out looking for deadly alien creatures. Steve narrowed his eyes at them, wondering if he had to give them a talk about how dangerous all this was. Joyce frowned after her children, concern in her eyes. Steve wondered what it was like for her, letting her child go out to find the creatures that had kidnapped her youngest son. For Steve, it would have been agony. It already _was,_ twisting his stomach and shaking his hands.

Mike followed after Hopper, his lanky form crowding the older man as much as he could, still protesting. Hopper stopped at the door, grabbing his coat and motioning to his adoptive daughter.

“Alright, dipshits, time to go home,” Steve said loudly.

Hopper gestured with his coat to Steve. “See? Time to go home. Now, leave it.” Then he pulled open the door and walked out.

El gave Mike a small smile. “Sorry, Mike.” She gave him a hug and then followed her father.

Mike was left staring at the door, looking lost and betrayed. A pang of empathy pierced Steve’s heart. He knew what it felt like to feel left behind, when everyone was doing something important and you were stuck on the bench, hoping to be thrown into the fray. He ruffled Mike’s hair. Mike ducked under his hand, giving him a scathing grimace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay guys. So, I know there is a canon map of Hawkins with markings of everyone's houses and shit, but I did not know that when I wrote this story, so all the places that I put them are not canon. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ I put Loch Nora and Steve's house to the very northeast, right on the edge of town. The Wheelers are south of that, on the east side of Hawkins. I put Dustin and Lucas more in the middle, nearer to the southwest, but mostly just south. I think Max and Cherry lane are on the west side of Hawkins, ranging to the north. Hopper's cabin and Joyce's house are outside of Hawkins, to the west.


	4. The River Rolls Under

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is from the poem, "Thames River Song," by Elka Cloke.  
unbetaed, as always.

Max walked into the lunch room on her second day of school and wished she was anywhere else. It was loud and busy but nowhere near what she was used to and she felt exposed. Like everyone was staring at her, like they knew she was a loser with no friends and would have to sit by herself—

She had skipped lunch yesterday in favor of sitting under the bleachers of the track field across the street. She had been late to her next class, but at least she hadn’t had to deal with the chaos of the lunchroom. She was about to turn and do the same thing yesterday when a voice stopped her. 

“Hey, you’re Max, right?”

She turned to see a kid from Mr. Clark’s class. 

“If you want, you can sit with us.” He gestured to the right, where she saw a group of three other boys all sitting at a table. One girl sat with them, next to a black-haired boy. She was smiling. “I’m Lucas.”

Max stared at him. “What are you, stalking me?” She had seen those same boys yesterday staring at her from across the parking lot. She had stared back at them, getting ready to demand what they were looking at, when they had turned as one and scampered down the street. 

Lucas shook his head. “Stalking? What—what do you mean, stalking?” 

“Oh, so you _weren’t_ with the group of four boys following me around yesterday?” 

“Oh, well, that, see—it’s nothing; that was nothing.” 

“Nothing.” Max raised her eyebrows. “Funny, because I could have sworn that it was stalking.” This is where Billy would have punched him, Max knew. He would have sneered an insult and started a fight and those boys wouldn’t have bothered to look at him again, let alone follow him around school. Max was, for a moment, tempted to do the same. But she wasn’t Billy, and she knew that she didn’t really want to fight this kid. If anything, she thought he was sort of brave for approaching the new girl with a perpetual bitch face. She nodded, “Okay, yeah. I’ll sit with you.”

Lucas grinned. “Really?”

“Yeah, stalker. Lead the way.”

“Cool,” Lucas said, and headed for the table.

Max followed at a slightly more sedate pace, wondering if she was going to regret this. 

“Look who I found,” Lucas said, with a grin as he plopped down at the table.

“Dude, you didn’t _find_ her,” argued the kid who had done the drumroll yesterday in Mr. Clark’s. Max was pretty sure his name was Dustin. 

Lucas rolled his eyes. “It’s just a saying, Dustin, jeez.”

A brown-haired boy sitting next to the girl smiled at Max. “I’m Will. Want to sit down?”

Max nodded and took a seat across from him, next to Lucas. 

Will gestured to the girl next to him. “This is El, and next to her is Mike. That’s Dustin, and you already know Lucas.”

Max tried to turn her grimace into a smile. “Max.”

“So,” Lucas leaned an elbow on the table, twisting his upper body, half in Dustin’s personal space. “Are you Madmax? Did you really beat Dustin’s high score at Dig Dug?”

Max blinked at him. That was _so_ not the question she was expecting. “Uh, yeah. I did. That—that was me.”

“Wait, seriously? How’dya do it? You gotta tell me, _no one_ beats Dustin at Dig Dug.” Lucas leaned back a little bit. 

Dustin made a noise and pushed Lucas’s head. “Dude, close much?”

“Hey!” Lucas made a face and turned, smacking Dustin, who smacked him back. They began to fight like three-year-olds, whapping their hands together vigorously. They had a sort of focus that told her that they were pretty much oblivious to the rest of the world. Max regarded them with some disdain, already wishing that she had gone under the bleachers for lunch.

“So, how did you do it?” Will asked, sort of softly. 

Max shrugged. “It wasn’t that hard. My brother and I used to play Dig Dug all the time back home.”

“You have a brother?” Mike piped up. “I have a sister who’s a senior this year. Maybe they’ll run into each other.”

Max felt her face shut down. “He’s not here,” she snapped. 

Mike drew back a little bit, blinking, “Oh.”

“Where are you from?” This was El, elegantly changing the subject. 

“California.”

“Really? Like LA?” Dustin quit hitting Lucas for a bit to ask the question. 

Max shook her head. “San Diego.”

“Wow, what made you come to Hawkins? We don’t have anyone from San Diego here.” Lucas said, looking genuinely interested. 

“My stepdad is from Hawkins. We moved back after…” She shook her head. “He always liked Hawkins better than San Diego, so he got a job transfer.”

“Where does he work?” Will asked. 

“The steel mill.” 

“Oh.”

The conversation petered off, giving way to an awkward silence. Dustin made a face at Lucas, who gave him wide eyes and a shrug. Mike’s eye twitched once and Will smirked. Max gripped her thighs, feeling like the green-eyed monster. She could talk to her friends at home like that. One swish of her hair and her best friend would have known exactly what she meant. But that was in San Diego, and this was Hawkins. Hawkins, where none of her friends lived. Hawkins, where she was _stuck_. 

“So!” She disrupted their silent conversation. “You guys go to the arcade a lot?” 

“Yeah,” Lucas said. “All the time! It’s like, the only fun thing to do around here.”

“That’s not true!” Dustin protested. “There’s the movie theater. And the library.”

Lucas scrunched his face up. “Come on, Dustin. Max isn’t going to think that the library is cool.”

“Well, maybe she does. You don’t know that—”

“Actually,” Max interrupted. “I love reading.”

“Really?” Will asked. “What do you read?”

“Sci-Fi, mostly. I like the older classics the best.” 

“Like, _Dune_?” Mike said. “’Cause Lucas has read _Dune,_ like, four times.”

“Dude, I love _Dune!_” Lucas sat up straighter.

“Great, ‘cause I want to know what you thought about the sand worm. Billy—” Max faltered. She swallowed and then said, “Billy always thought that _Star Wars_ totally copied _Dune_ but I think _Star Wars’_ sand worm was totally different.”

Lucas opened his mouth and launched into a lengthy treatise on the differences between the sand worms in _Dune_ and _Star Wars._

_Finally!_ Max thought, _a rational person with good points! When I get home, I am totally telling_—she stopped. She wasn’t telling Billy anything, because he was dead. Grief rose in her throat and she felt tears sting her eyes. For a second, the lunch room faded away and she was alone, the edges of her vision blackening and her hands tightening. 

“Hey, are you okay?”

Max jerked faintly, blinking rapidly, trying not to let her tears fall. El was peering at her with concerned eyes, the only one who seemed to have noticed that Max wasn’t paying attention. The rest of them were engrossed in a very involved debate about the spice runners from _Star Wars_ versus the mélange harvesters of _Dune_. Max sniffled, reminded of how Billy would cry, silently and alone, as though he were the only one in the world.

She nodded, blinking. “Yeah, just got something in my eye.”

El nodded, sitting back. “Do you want to go to the arcade today? You and Dustin could compete, see who is better at Dig Dug.”

Max grinned. “Well, of course it’s me. I already beat his high score, remember?”

“Hey,” Dustin protested. “That could’ve been a fluke! You don’t know that!”

“Yes, I do,” Max jeered. 

“No, you don’t.”

“Well why don’t we find out? After school today. We can have a Dig Dug tournament.” Max matched a glare to Dustin’s. 

“You’re on, Madmax.” Dustin crossed his arms and sat up straighter. 

“Great, you stalkers ca—”

“Dustin,” interrupted Lucas quietly. “We can’t, remember?”

Dustin’s face fell. 

Max frowned. “Why not? Are you guys doing something?”

Lucas shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Yeah. Sorry. But maybe next time!”

The bell rang. Lucas and Dustin both jumped up from the table like someone had lit their asses on fire, grabbing their trash from their lunch and practically running off. 

Max blinked. “What’s _their_ problem?”

Will just gave her an apologetic grin. “Sorry, Max. But really, we should all go to the arcade, sometime. It’d be cool, you know?”

“Yeah.”

El gave Max a smile and Mike followed her, barely tossing a, “bye, Max!” over his shoulder. Will followed them, and she was left alone. 

* * *

At noon straight, Steve packed his bat in the trunk of his car, pulled on his members only jacket, and checked to make sure that his phone had enough battery. It was at 54%. Good.

He locked up his house, checking the handle twice, hopped in his car, and headed over to the point on the map that Hopper had given him the night before. It was a place to park that was roughly in the middle of his designated patrol area, carefully selected using Hopper’s extensive knowledge of Hawkins and Google Maps. Last night, Steve had also texted Robin to update her on the situation. She got if after band practice, sending him a slew of emojis and swear words.

Hopper had sent out a patrol schedule for everyone to follow, as well. Dustin and Lucas were patrolling the least, only three times a week. Jonathan and El were patrolling four times a week, like Steve and Nancy. Steve was patrolling the northwest corner every day. 

He didn’t mind. It would be something to do to get this antsy feeling out. It krept along his skin and burrowed deep into his bones until he felt like he was housing some sort of parasite, eating at his sleep and nesting in his stomach. He had lain awake in bed for half the night, images of the tunnels last year flashing in his mind. After tossing and turning for what felt like hours, Steve had gotten up at six. It was painfully early for him, but the restless energy had pushed him to get up and move. He’d made coffee, paced around his house for half an hour, regretted drinking caffeine, and then realized that a day of rest would not be in his future. He’d given up and shot a few baskets, just for something to do. He hadn’t really played basketball since he graduated in May. 

It had felt good to move, but Steve had gotten bored. So he got his bat and practiced swinging, but that had also gotten boring fast, so he had eventually sat himself down by his pool, dipped his feet in (absently thinking of Billy as he did so), and started cleaning the nails on his bat. It kept his hands occupied enough that it felt like he was doing something productive. 

At 11:30, he’d jumped up and began getting ready. You almost would’ve thought that he was getting ready for a date, how obsessive he was with his attention to detail. He chose his outfit carefully (his thickest jeans to help protect his legs, a jacket that washed easily so he could get blood out of it, and a pair of tight converse that he could lace up his ankle so he wasn’t worried about tripping over his own feet, should he have to run) and then double and triple checked his pockets to make sure he had everything. 

And now, finally, he was patrolling. He took a route up to the north first, then cut across west until he was on the very edge of town, into the woods. Trees loomed on either side of him, silent sentries to the evil of the Upside Down. Steve faintly wondered if he should be looking for any rotting plots, because last time that was what Hopper had noticed first. He took in the crisp October air for a minute, just scanning the landscape. It was all flat, tangled roots running into rundown warehouses that had long been abandoned. Steve could spy one hulking ruin through the boughs of a pine trees, squinting against the glint of metal reflecting the noon-day sun. 

The forest was loud with animals. A squirrel jumped across his path and chittered at him. Birds chirped in the trees and the leaves rustled. Steve gripped his bat tighter in his hands and breathed out a huff of breath. He knew, rationally, that the demodogs were a lot louder than any forest animal, but he couldn’t help but think that if the forest were quieter, then he would be more comfortable. What he would prefer the most would be to grab some meat from the butchers and lure the ‘dogs out, like he had done with Dustin at the junkyard last fall, but that wasn’t an option this time. They didn’t even know if there were demodogs out there. That was the point of the patrolling—to _find_ them.

But that also meant that Steve couldn’t set up an ambush point, complete with an old bus to hide in. It meant that he—that _everyone,_ Lucas and Dustin included—were vulnerable to surprise attacks. Steve hadn’t put up much of a protest at the Byers, because he knew Hop didn’t like it as much as he did, but Steve felt like he was going to crawl out of his skin, sending the boys out to patrol. Dread squirmed in his stomach at the thought of Lucas and Dustin overrun with demodogs, screaming for assistance, with no one close enough to help. It made Steve want to shout, to cry, to scream and rage and bundle them up in Kevlar for the rest of their lives. He straightened his spine, puffing out his chest like he’d seen Billy do a hundred times. He’d just have to find the demodogs first, he thought, gripping the bat tighter. He’d just have to render the need to patrol useless.

_Alright, fuckers. Come and get me._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I have never read _Dune_ in my life, and my only experience with _ Star Wars_ is the movies, so don't come for me for mentioning the sand worms or spice dealers or melange harvesters. I'm just trying to live my life. Also, I realize that Mr. Clarke is a middle school teacher, not a high school one, but like, IDC ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ Also, I found a headcanon in another fic that Neil worked at a steel mill, so that's what I adopted. He seems like a manager type to me - someone who absolutely needs to have control AT ALL TIMES and is hell to work under.  



	5. And She Was A Child

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from the poem _Annabel Lee,_ by Edgar Allen Poe.  
As always, this is unbetaed.

As soon as the bell rang, Max was out the door to the school. After the boys pulled that weird stunt at lunch, her afternoon had just gotten worse. It left her in the kind of mood that Billy usually carried around: drunk on anger and looking like a shark, like the next person to look at him wrong would get decked in the face. She remembered Billy like this; remembered how he was only too good at getting into fights, too good at pissing Neil off. People asked why Billy didn’t defend himself—but the thing was, he _did,_ in the only way he could: small rebellions. Like his hair, or his earring; like the books. But the problem was, sometimes Billy was reckless; sometimes he cared too little for his own safety and his rebellions got too big. And then Neil would beat him bloody, and Max would be left to pick up the pieces.

“Hey!”

Max kept walking.

“Hey, Max, I was talking to you!”

Max whirled on Lucas. “What do you want, stalker?”

Lucas pulled up short, “What’s _your_ problem?”

“My problem, stalker, is that I wanted real friends—not assholes who are gonna ditch me as soon as the bell rings,” Max snapped.

“Look, I’m sorry about that—”

“Oh, really? So you want to tell me about what made you and Dustin clam up so bad?”

“That was nothing—”

“I knew it,” Max turned away. “You don’t really want to be friends with me, you just want—”

“I’m serious! Max, wait!” Lucas reached out and grabbed her arm. “Max, wait. It’s just something we gotta do for the Chief—”

“The police chief? Seriously, why do you have to do anything for the police chief?”

“Look, he’s El’s father, so we kinda gotta keep on his good side. I swear, Dustin and I weren’t trying to get out of going to the arcade with you. I think it would be really cool to watch you kick Dustin’s ass at Dig Dug.”

Max stared at him, all of her anger rushing out. “Really?” she asked, timidly.

Lucas nodded, “Yeah, I swear.”

Max glanced at the ground. “Well, that would be cool, stalker.” She spotted her mom in the line of cars and began heading that way.

“Hey,” Lucas called, “maybe I could give you my number? So we can schedule a time.”

Max stared at him a moment, and then a small smile crept on her face. “Yeah, that’d be good.”

She handed her phone over, a new contact open, and Lucas typed in his information.

“There,” he said, handing it back. “Just text me, okay? So I have your number, too.”

Max nodded, a little breathless at his voice, when a car honked. Max frowned, turning to where her mother was looking irritable, one hand on the horn. Max winced, “Sorry, I got to go. That’s my mom.”

Lucas stepped in for a hug, a nice surprise. Max gave him a squeeze and a parting smile, and then ran to her mother’s car.

When Max climbed in, Susan asked, “Who was that, honey?”

It was her Passive Aggressive Voice, the one she used on Max when she thought Max was doing something she shouldn’t and should know better.

Max narrowed her eyes. “What?”

“You know what your father says; you shouldn’t hang around with people like that.” Susan’s voice was reproachful.

“He’s not my father,” Max spat. “And just because Neil said I shouldn’t do something doesn’t mean he’s right. I’m not going to ditch Lucas just because Neil’s a racist piece of shit.”

“Maxine!” Susan snapped. “You do not speak about your father that way, do you hear me?”

“He’s _not_ my _father_,” Max shouted. “I don’t have to do whatever the fuck he says!”

“Do you know what he’s done for this family?” Susan fumed, “He took us in, gave us a nice place to live, food on the table. He gave you a brother! He’s been nothing but good to us, Max. His private beliefs are not for you to comment on.”

“If they’re his ‘private beliefs’ then I don’t have to follow them,” Max snarled.

“When he is home, you do, Max,” Susan said tightly.

“Well, he’s not exactly here, is he, Mom?”

_“Maxine.”_

Max turned to stare out the window, fury and indignation on Lucas’s behalf roiling in her gut.

“We are not done talking about this, young lady.”

“Yes, we are,” Max muttered to the window.

She grabbed her phone out of her pocket and pulled up Lucas’s contact.

_This is Max :),_ she sent.

The rest of the drive passed in stony silence, the air permeated with the ghosts of old fights. This was not the first time that Susan had impressed the need to follow Neil’s directions into Max, and this was not the first time that Max had blown that off. Learning that Neil was the most ass-backwards, cruel person she had ever had the displeasure of knowing was Max’s first lesson from Billy. He should have been better at getting on Neil’s good side, because he had more practice and was willing to do whatever it took to stay out of Neil’s warpath—even if that meant blowing people off who didn’t deserve the disrespect—but Neil had always liked Max better. It was a fact that Max had (somewhat guiltily, later) thrown in his face during some of their fights. And it wasn’t that Susan really agreed with Neil’s prejudices, just that she was so good at assimilating into her new living situation that she could virtually erase her own morals if it meant an easier life for her and her daughter. On good days, Max didn’t blame her for it. This was not a good day.

When Susan pulled into the driveway, Max was out the door and down the yard before Susan could even get out.

“Max! HEY!”

Max ignored her mother in favor of stomping down Cherry Lane and fuming.

“MAXINE! COME BACK HERE!”

Max took off at a run, rounding the block and crossing the street. The woods took her in and her footsteps turned from hard echoes on the pavement to muted footfalls on soft dirt. She breathed a sigh and slowed down. She liked the way the forest smelled—it was nothing like San Diego, which always smelled like some sort of trash, or like the deserts of California, which were always sage-and-heat scented.

But Indiana smelled cool, like perpetual rain and water. She liked the feeling of the wind on her skin as it blew over a stream. Water was so abundant in Indiana compared to the desert. Her first day exploring, she found a stream, which was shocking, because all she would have found in Cali would have been a streambed and some weeds at the bottom. Max stepped over a log and tripped on a root just in front of it. She grunted as she landed, stumbling a bit to regain her footing, and then glared at the ground. This was another new thing about Indiana—roots. Not like the forests of California didn’t have roots, it’s just that there were less of them. A lot less, to the point that she didn’t have to worry about tripping over them every two feet.

She grumbled about stupid roots and kept walking, trying to work off her anger. What she should have done when she got out of the car was grab her skateboard, but she hadn’t thought of that. Max groaned and sat on a rock, plopping her head in her hands.

Billy would have given her the same warning, she knew. Neil Hargrove was famously prejudiced, a fact that Max had had to contend with for a while. But she had thought it might be a little different in Hawkins. That maybe Neil would loosen up, not be so goddamn controlling all the time. But that seemed to have been reversed, in fact, as if Neil’s metaphorical hand around Max’s life was just getting tighter as she grew older.

Billy would have given her the same warning, Max wouldn’t have listened, and then they would have fought about it before Billy would help sneak Max to do things with Lucas. He didn’t care who Max hung around—as long as they didn’t make trouble. But Susan was a different matter entirely. If Max asked her to drive her to Lucas’s house, or the arcade or something, Susan would want to go in. Meet the kids Max was hanging out with. Meet their family, if it was a sleepover. And that wouldn’t go down well.

Somewhere to her left, a branch snapped. Max looked up, wondering if she was going to see a deer.

It was not a deer.

All Max could make out was a dark, four-legged shape, about the size of a large dog. It perched in the shadows, looking distinctly un-dog-like with how it clung to a log. A growl echoed through the forest, low and rumbling. Max froze, staring at it. She could have sworn that it was looking at her, but funnily enough, she couldn’t see any _eyes._ Not even a nose—just these strange looking lines culminating in the middle of the head.

Another growl sounded and was that a _lip?_ curled slightly, peeling back just a little bit. The breath left her lungs in a rush and Max scrambled back, hitting the ground hard. The—_thing_—took a step forward, an odd clicking noise resounding off the trees. _What the fuck_ is _that?_ Max thought, already crab-walking backwards, trying to put distance between them.

The monster didn’t like that, taking three quick steps and leaping from the log to crouch in front of her.  
Max pushed herself back and up, managing to get her feet under her, and then she _ran._ Ran like the wind, like the waves she so loved to ride in California. Ran like she was going to die if she didn’t.

No fucking way was she letting that thing touch her.

Her feet pounded the ground as she sprinted back the way she came, breath knocking in her lungs, narrowly dodging grasping branches and looming trunks. She ducked under a low-hanging bough and leaped a rock in her path, covering her face with her arms to protect it and hoping she would land well.

Max hit the ground with a jarring clack of her teeth, but didn’t stop. The air rasped in her mouth and she tasted blood, but the panic eclipsing her vision wouldn’t let her slow. The dirt was soft beneath her feet, soil giving way in unexpected places, sinking her heels and catching her toes until it felt like it was grabbing at her, trying to pull her under like quick sand. She sobbed a gasp and then fell, knees impacting painfully with the ground, rolling and slamming into a trunk. Max gave a little cry, soft and pathetic, tears pricking her eyes and head jerked to the side. She tried to sit up, aching and hurt. The monster was on her before she could, pinning her with claws the size of paring knives. It snarled, lips curling, and she realized to her horror that it didn’t _have_ a face. In its place were just petals of skin peeling back to reveal rows and rows of shark teeth, and a maw deep and black and putrid.

Max, unashamedly, screamed. Her hands scrabbled next to her—behind her—around her, looking for something _anything._

_Please,_ she thought. _Please._

Her hand closed around a branch, thick and knobbly with bark, heavy like a mace. She brought it up with all her strength, chest pulling and arms straining, and slammed it into the monster’s flower-face with a cry. The thing stumbled off her, strangely silent, and she sat up, hitting it once more. It backed up another few feet and Max regained her footing, smashing it again. And again and again and again, using the branch as a bludgeon. The monster’s head was looking closer to a bloody smear than a real head, but Max couldn’t stop. Couldn’t—_wouldn’t_—stop, until she got all the panic, all the rage and anger and _terror_ out of her system. 

This fucking thing had tried to eat her. Had tried to devour her, like lunch. Rage, instead of fear, rose up in her, and she screamed, clubbing it one more time. Her feet stumbled as she lurched forward, swinging blows echoing with thick _thumps,_ the forest dead quiet around her.

Tears blurred Max’s eyes, dribbling onto her cheeks. She raised the branch. She opened her mouth for another scream, but all that came out was a small, quiet wail. She staggered backwards, her shoulder blades hitting the tree, and dropped the branch. Max breathed in little whimpers, staring. The monster lay still, back-jointed legs splayed and claws twitching slightly. Numbly, her fingers grabbed her phone, which had—surprisingly—survived the encounter in the pocket of her hoodie. She unseeingly tapped the screen and shakily put it to her ear. It dialed, the tone bland in her ear, and then a voice said, “Max?”

“Lucas,” she whimpered.

“Max? What’s wrong? Where are you?” 

“This, this, this _thing_ attacked me, and I don’t know what it is and I think I killed it but it’s twitching and what if it’s not really dead and—”

“Whoa, whoa, slow down. What kind of thing, Max? What do you mean, thing?”

“Like, a monster. It’s a _monster,_ Lucas.”

“Fuck,” Lucas muttered, a little away from the receiver. “Is it slimy? Looks kinda like a dog but doesn’t have a face?”

_“Yes.”_

“Alright, tell me where you are and I’ll come to you. Don’t worry Max, we’ll get this sorted out.” Lucas sounded—strong, Max realized. Calm and collected, as though he knew exactly what to do. 

She exhaled a panicky breath and said, “Okay. I’m off Cherry Lane, into the forest.”

“We’ll be right there.”

Max stared at the body and fell into a sort of trance. The edges of her vision dimmed and darkened. Her body stilled, going from constant movement to none at all. For a moment, she almost wasn’t sure she was breathing. She could feel her heartbeat, still loud in her chest, but couldn’t make it translate into action. The forest began to move around her, birds beginning to chirp again and leaves swaying in the wind. Max hadn’t realized how quiet it had gone until the noise was back. It was almost as if nature itself feared the creature and went silent when it was around. She thought of the strange stillness in the forest, as though it was _waiting,_ when the thing had attacked her. _Waiting for what?_ She wondered, distantly realizing that her train of thought was not exactly rational and not really caring. 

“Max!” Lucas’s voice called from the street, which, Max realized with a shock, was much nearer than she had thought. “Where are you?”

She tried to call back but her voice came out a croak. Max cleared her throat and tried again. “Here!” 

Lucas crashed through the underbrush. It was loud, thought Max dazedly. _Was I that loud? _No wonder that monster had found her. 

“Max,” Lucas breathed, coming to a stop a few feet away. Max stared at him for a second, and then she was hugging him, clutching tight and burying her face in his neck. Lucas hugged her back, holding just as tightly, murmuring comforting noises in her ear. Max tried to hold back a sob, tried to breathe deeply, but it wasn’t working. She’d nearly just _died,_ and she needed the calm collection of someone else right now. It was surprising to her how comforting it felt to see Lucas.

“Shhhhh,” he murmured, one hand stroking down her hair. “You’re alright, you’re okay.” Then he paused and pulled back, “You’re okay, right? It didn’t hurt you?”

Max gave a little wet laugh and shook her head, wiping her face. “No, it didn’t.”

Lucas sighed in relief. “Good.”

Another person, one Max had not noticed, whistled. Max jerked, her heading whipping to see a boy—older than her by a few years, looking down at the monster with an impressed look on his face.

“Wow,” he said. “You really did a number on this thing.” He had a bat with a bunch of nails hammered through it in one hand. 

She frowned slightly, trying to place his voice. It was familiar—a low tenor, higher than Billy’s but not by much, a slightly plaintive tone to it. She studied his face for a minute. It, too, was familiar to her, the lines and planes forming a visage that tugged at her memory.

Max pushed aside her musings at his look and nodded. “I hit it with a branch.”

The boy raised his eyebrows. “A branch?”

“Really hard,” Max added. “Over and over again.”

“Max, this is Steve. Steve, this is Madmax, the new kid we were telling you about,” Lucas made the introductions. 

Steve nodded to her. “Hi.” Then he prodded the limp monster with the end of the bat. It didn’t move. It had even stopped twitching. 

Steve sighed. “We’re going to have to get this to Hopper. And that means stinking up my car again.” His voice ended on a bit of a whine. 

Lucas nodded. Then grinned. “Sucks for you, man.”

Steve shot him an irritated look and went back to studying the monster. 

Max shook her head, as if trying to clear it of fuzz. “Wait, you guys know what this thing is?”

“Yeah,” Lucas avoided her eyes. “We call it a demodog.”

“A demodog?” Max tried to hide the emotion in her voice, tried to pull it away from something a little too much like panic and failed. “What the fuck is a demodog?” 

Steve looked her in the eye. “You might want to sit down.”

* * *

Steve loaded up the demodog into the trunk of his car, complaining the whole time about how it was going to stink it up again. Max and Lucas climbed into the Beamer and Lucas called Chief Hopper, telling them to meet at the disposal sight and that they had a demodog.

Max eyed him curiously as Steve started driving and peppered both of them with questions about the last two years. They answered best they could, exchanging cautious looks the whole time. Max had a feeling that this would all be very surreal to her in a little while, but for now, the reality of it all was cushioned by immediacy. Her brain hadn’t quite had enough time to fully comprehend the implications of what they were telling her. She still felt a little fuzzy, like she was walking through a cloud, but she went along with it anyway.

When they got to the junkyard, the chief was already waiting for them. 

Steve got out. “Hey, Hopper.”

The chief, a big man with an inscrutable face, nodded. “What is Lucas doing here? Shouldn’t he be on patrol soon? And who’s she?”

Max tried to contain a sneer and said, “I’m the one that did your job for you and killed the demodog in Steve’s car.”

Hopper raised an eyebrow and demanded, “Explain.”

So they did, Steve and Lucas jumping in and telling the story in broken fragments as they talked over one another. 

After several “one at a _time_s,” Hopper got the whole story. He looked at Max, mouth open, but then just nodded again and said, “Show it to me.”

Steve went around back and popped the trunk. The demodog lay awkwardly swaddled in a blanket, one claw out and ripping the carpet. Hopper blinked and huffed and took a moment to study it. Eventually, he said, “Good job, kid.” Then he picked up the demodog and began carrying it deeper into the junkyard.

The disposal site turned out to be an old bus squatting in the middle of the junkyard. Max took one step into it and choked on the stench, eyes watering and nose immediately running. 

“You get used to it,” Lucas said. 

“No, you don’t,” Steve tossed back over his shoulder from where he was ahead of them.

Lucas huffed and glared at him, and gestured Max further into the bus ahead of him. 

Max hesitated, wondering if she really wanted to see how they disposed of the demodogs if it meant going in there. “I don’t know, stalker. Are you sure I’m not going to just drop dead the second I take a full breath of that gross ass smell?”

She faintly heard Hopper call, “Language!” from inside the bus. 

Lucas gave her an offended look. “What—you think I’m trying to kill you? I was the one who came to your rescue after that demodog attacked you!”

Max gave him an unimpressed look. “Rescue? Bullshit. I took that demodog out all by myself, thank you very much, and it was Steve who had the car. So you didn’t rescue shit.”

Lucas kept protesting as Max held her breath and made her way to the back of the bus. Hopper was getting ready to dump the demodog in the hole, a large piece of sheet metal and a seat discarded to the side. 

The actual procedure of disposing of the ‘dog turned out to be dumping it in a hole cut out of the floor and dug deep into the ground. The hole was bigger than it looked, Max thought. It was mostly dark, but stank to high hell. Hopper maneuvered the blanket so he could keep a hold of it when he dumped the demodog. 

“What’s in there?” she asked. 

“Slime and lime,” Steve replied. 

Max gave him a grossed-out look. “What?”

“Lime,” Hopper said, dropping the ‘dog. “It’s a mineral that helps bodies decompose.” He stood up heavily. 

“And the slime part?” 

Hopper gave Max a smile that wasn’t very happy. “The decomposing parts.”

“Oh.”

“We lined the hole with several layers of plastic.” Lucas said. “We don’t really know what the demodogs are made of, just that it kills plants, so we don’t want it getting into the soil or the ground water. We have to pump it out occasionally.” 

Max fought a gag at how disgusting that sounded. Hopper pulled the sheet metal over the opening and then arranged the seat on top of it so that it looked like it had fallen over.

“Nothing to see here,” Steve murmured in a faux-innocent voice. “We’re just dumping weird alien bodies, not abnormal at all. Move along, folks.”

Max smirked at that and then fled the bus.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I have some complex thoughts about Susan. Most of them are that she isn't the worst mother in the world. From what it looks like, Neil raises Billy and Susan raises Max and that's just how the family is split down the middle. I also think that Susan is in a very stressful situation - she's married to an abusive prick, and while he might not hit her daughter, who knows what he does to her. I think that this then facilitates a sort of sedate reaction to Billy's abuse: she doesn't necessarily actively encourage it, but she sure as hell doesn't do much to stop it. Some people view this as being complicit in the abuse, other people view this as a survival mechanism for her and her daughter. I guess I'm somewhere in the middle. Do I believe she is complicit in the abuse? Yeah, sort of. I believe she's in a shit situation and doing the best she can but that certainly doesn't mean that she's really doing a good job. From a morally black-and-white standpoint, she's part of the abusive cycle. From the standpoint of being in the situation: she doesn't want it to happen, but she also has priorities and those don't really include Billy.
> 
> Now, I'm not being very kind to her in the narrative. Most of the thoughts on her from the characters who know enough about her to form an opinion are not nice: Steve and Max both think she's pretty useless when it comes to defending Billy (which is true) and Billy views her an an extraneous addition to his home life. None of them have a lot of nice thoughts about her, mostly because they can't really relate to her. Max is the one most removed from the abuse, since she has both Billy and Susan to take Neil's tendencies onto them. From this viewpoint, Max sees her mother being complicit and stationary; since she isn't actively going to the cops, she is therefore "useless." While this is a valid viewpoint to have, since Susan is, arguably, the one with the most responsibility to stop the abuse _ and_ the one with the most resources, no one can really know what goes on behind closed doors, and maybe she's being abused as badly as Billy is. If it's one thing we know about Neil, he knows how to abuse his family in ways so that no one else knows or sees. I think this then creates a narrative in my story, and in the fandom at large, that since Susan isn't doing anything, she's actively encouraging it. I don't necessarily think that's totally true.
> 
> What I'm trying to say is that Susan is a complex character in of herself, just by virtue of being in a shitty situation, and I tried to portray the characters' thoughts on her from their perspectives: as children, who don't really know the whole scope of the situation. I think all that they really see is an adult who is doing nothing and blame her for that. I think that this is a valid perspective to have, and that it is formed by their own experiences and personal morals. I'm not trying to demonize Susan or say that she's an abuser herself. All I'm trying to say is that she's doing the best she can in her own fucked up way, and that it can be criticized, because there are a lot of actions she could have taken to protect her daughter and her stepson, and didn't take them for a myriad of potential reasons that we are never given in the show and therefore can elaborate on them ourselves.
> 
> come find me on tumblr @withoutmonsters


	6. They All Dead Did Lie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from _the Rime of the Ancient Marinere_ by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.  
TW for panic attacks  
come find me on tumblr @withoutmonsters

The shadows lurked just outside of the headlights, gathering like thick blankets of darkness. Max kept tensing as the car moved, expecting to see a shape loom out of the black and leap at the car. Her hands were gripped into tight fists on her knees, where they had been for the whole drive. After disposing of the demodog, they had dropped Lucas off back at his place, to start a late patrol with Dustin. 

Steve’s Beamer—maroon and sleek and very nice looking—took the corner a little sharply, but Max didn’t care. She was too busy wondering when her life had turned into a sci-fi film. The reality of her day had finally hit her, and now she felt dizzy and confused and shocked. Her brain couldn’t quite comprehend the gravitas of it all. Aliens. Aliens existed. Some goddamn interdimensional aliens existed and had _attacked_ her and—

If she didn’t distract herself, she was going to go crazy.

Max cleared her throat, “So, nail bat, huh?”

Steve gave a short laugh. “Yeah, uh, Jonathan made it but I sort of adopted it when—” At her blank look, he elaborated, “Will’s older brother.”

“Oh,” Max shifted in her seat. “Must have a pretty fucked up head, makin’ something like that.”

“No—no,” Steve shook his head. “He’s pretty chill, actually. Was just desperate, y’know?”

Max did know. Knew all too well the desperation to get her hands on something, anything, that would give her an edge over that goddamn ‘dog—

“Pretty cool, isn’t it?” Steve asked, glancing over. 

“Yeah,” Max laughed a little. It was the kind of thing that she could picture Billy liking. He would have given that little boyish laugh that he didn’t let anyone hear anymore and swung it just for the sake of hearing it whistle. He would’ve loved smashing the shit out of demodogs with it, too. 

She could only all too easily imagine Billy here. He would have hated Indiana, would’ve sneered at the trees and the woods and the little hick town. Probably would complain about the lack of ocean and surfing every day for a month. Would have walked around town shirtless just to show off until Max complained, and then done it just to annoy her. And he’d have a hell of a time ramming demodog heads into bloody pulps. Probably take that bat and go into the woods just _looking_ for trouble. Maybe that would even have kept him from getting into fights. 

“Where do you live?” Max startled out of her reverie at Steve’s voice.

“Cherry Lane. We just moved in.”

“Yeah, I heard from the party. Where are you from?”

Max shifted, “California.”

A small smile touched Steve’s face. “I have a friend in California. His name’s Billy.”

Max froze. “What?”

Steve nodded. “Yeah, he was originally from Hawkins but moved to San Diego when he was ten.”

Max blinked, trying to make her lips move. “That’s—that’s my brother.”

Steve whirled on her. “What? Wait—what? Billy’s here? In Hawkins?”

Max stared at him a little dumbly. “You’re Steve Harrington.” 

She hadn’t remembered that Steve lived in Hawkins. It wasn’t like she had paid that much attention to him, back in Cali. Their only interactions were the occasional phone or Skype call, which was always moderated by Billy, because he was the only thing they had in common. She hadn’t even considered that this Steve would be Billy’s Steve. 

He looked happy—like he was delighted to know that Billy was in town. 

_He doesn’t know,_ Max thought, her stomach sinking. Oh, how could she have been so stupid? She had thought that Neil or Susan or _someone_ would have contacted him, would have told him that his best friend of over ten years was dead. But of course not—of course they hadn’t, because they didn’t know. Billy had never told Neil about Steve, and wasn’t in the business of telling Susan anything more than he had to. Max had completely forgotten.

_“Max.”_

“No, Billy’s not here.”

Steve pulled into her driveway. “Why not?”

Max licked her lips. “Steve, Billy’s dead.”

He froze, doe eyes wide and—insulted. “Why would you even say that?” He snapped,

“What—no, this isn’t right. You’re lying. You have to be—”

“Steve,” Max said. “He hasn’t talked to you since September, right?” 

Steve flinched, all the confirmation Max needed. He was looking at her like she was some sort of monster, like she was _dangerous._ Like what she was saying was dangerous. 

“Steve,” she said again. She felt like she had to keep saying it, like if she stopped calling his name, he’d turn tail and run. “They told us he drowned. He went out to surf late at night and fell off his board. They said—they said that a riptide pulled him out and that his board hit him and knocked him unconscious. That by the time he woke up, he was too weak to swim. They told us that he closed his eyes and drifted off; that it was peaceful. Steve, Billy’s dead.”

* * *

Steve had been staring at the garage door to his house for who knew how long. It was white and a little blurry under the strain of staring so long, but Steve barely registered that.

Billy was dead. Had _been_ dead for a whole month—a whole month of worrying, of sleepless nights and tired eyes and praying to a god that he didn’t even believe in that the worst hadn’t happened—

Well, the worst had happened. _Worse_ than the worst had happened. 

Steve tried to let go of the steering wheel and found he couldn’t. He was white-knuckling it, enough to normally be painful, but he couldn’t feel it. He was numb; his whole body felt like it was a radio caught between stations, static-y and loud and fuzzy. Some part of his brain had had the forethought to turn off his car, because it sat quiet and dead under him. _Fuck._ He couldn’t even remember the drive home from Max’s, just a daze of disbelieving grief. 

He eventually pulled the key out of the ignition and stumbled out of the beamer. His legs weren’t working right. His front door was unlocked, yet he just stared dumbly at the handle. Steve didn’t even have the presence of mind to freak out about it—he just stepped over the threshold. Robin was waiting in the kitchen for him. He stared at her, empty eyed.

“Billy’s dead,” he rasped. 

“What?” Robin blinked, frowning like she didn’t quite understand him. 

Then she studied his face and, “Oh, dingus,” Robin murmured, coming towards him. She held her arms out. He sank into them, feeling her take his weight. 

“She said he drowned,” Steve choked out. “She said he went surfing at night and drowned. She said it was _peaceful._ Robin, Billy’s _dead.”_

Steve began to convulse, shakes and shivers that wracked him from the inside out. Billy was gone—his oldest friend in the world was gone and he hadn’t known. He’d stupidly thought that Billy was okay. That maybe his father had taken his phone or something, and he just hadn’t been able to get it back. It had happened before. But Billy had always found a way to contact Steve, even if it was walking two miles to the library to email him a quick line. 

What were his final hours like, when he forced his legs to keep kicking, even when he was so tired, he just wanted to give up? He wouldn’t have given up, Steve knew. Billy was a fighter, always had been. Sometimes too much for his own good. He would have done his damned best to get back to shore. To get back to Max, to _Steve._

The boy Steve had loved longer than anyone else in the world was dead and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it.

Something cracked in his chest then, and his lungs seized up and—“Oh god, oh _god,_ Robin—I can’t breathe—I can’t breathe—”

He doubled over, trying to draw air into his body—he was suffocating he was _suffocating_ he couldn’t breathe—

His ribs suddenly popped as if unstuck and his breath flooded in in great gasps, shuddering through his whole body and blackness clouded his vision and he was dimly aware that he was on his knees, that Robin was calling his name, but he couldn’t quite figure out why—why—

Why Billy was dead.

And then the tears finally came, flooding his eyes and wracking his frame, eclipsing his faculties, shattering his vision into shards, ripping at his heart and snapping his spine. 

_Billy was dead._


	7. Dreams of Running

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for grief and a little bit of suicidal ideation. There's not a lot of it, and it's not really active, but just to be careful, it's in there. Also another tw for some implied/referenced homophobia.  
come find me on tumblr @withoutmonsters

Hours later, when Steve had cried himself out several times, curled up on the couch with his head in Robin’s lap, Robin asked him about Billy. 

“You really loved him, huh?” 

Steve stared at the black screen of his TV. Made his head move a little in response. 

“What was he like?”

Steve licked his lips and forced his voice to work. “He was…” 

How to describe him? Loving and loud and rude and handsome and happy and angry, so _angry._

“He was my best friend. I know that you already know that, but…that’s how I always thought of him. It’s been so long since he was anything else that I can’t even remember it.” Steve turned his face into her leg, using the pressure to ground himself. “He was a dick to his sister. Would complain about her so much, but I could tell he loved her. I met her today. She’s…just like him. Demolished a demodog with nothing but an old branch.”

Robin smoothed her fingers through his hair, humming softly. Then she froze. “Wait, she knows?”

Steve nodded. “She got attacked today, off Cherry Lane.”

“I thought you patrolled up there,” Steve could hear the frown in her voice. 

“I do.” He shrugged. “But it’s a big area for just one person. And if they’re quiet, they’re practically invisible. Patrolling isn’t a perfect answer, Robin, just something we can do until we figure out how those motherfucking demodogs are still alive.”

Robin resumed petting his hair. Steve stared off at space, the walls of his home blurring before his eyes. He felt so tired. Drained and heavy, an exhaustion that creeped inside and nested in his bones. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to sleep the rest of his life away until he could see Billy again. 

“He liked ice cream at night.” 

Robin paused, as if a little shocked that Steve had chosen to keep talking. 

“He always ended up craving ice cream after he went to bed. He’d call me and bitch about it at like, 2 am. His favorite flavor was always something fruity. I used to tease him about how he was so wishy-washy about it. One week it would be coconut, the next mango, then pomegranate.” Steve turned to look at Robin a little. “Did you know there is an ice cream shop in San Diego that sells pomegranate ice cream? He loved it. The first Snapchat he ever sent me was a massive waffle cone with three scoops of pomegranate ice cream, tilting a little on one side. He took Max there once. She told him that the gelato shop around the corner was better and he got so offended that he wouldn’t drive her anywhere for a week. He only started again when…” 

He only started again when Max complained to her mother, who told Neil. Who gave Billy a shiner and threatened to take his keys if he didn’t “take his responsibility to his sister seriously.”

Steve trailed off, thinking about Neil. Thinking about how Neil Hargrove lived in Hawkins, Indiana now; about how Steve had ached to take his bat to Neil’s head ever since he’d hit the Demogorgon with that first Grand Slam. Steve’s fingers twitched. 

“Come on, dingus,” Robin said. “Let’s get you to bed.”

Steve moved obediently, feeling a little bit like a child, and began to walk upstairs. Robin kept ahold of him the whole time, a hand gripping his wrist, one arm wrapped around his waist. In his room, she sat him on the bed and tugged at his jacket (he was still wearing the Members Only one, from patrolling earlier) until he took it off. 

“Jeans now, dingus.” 

Steve popped the button and tugged ineffectually at the waistband. Robin sighed and pulled him to standing. “Come on, dingus. I know you can do this.”

Robin was right; Steve was perfectly capable of undressing himself. He just didn’t really want to, right now. Right now, he wanted to get black-out drunk. Or so high that he couldn’t move, or go back out and fight demodogs until he was hurt and drained and on the verge of passing out. He didn’t want to _think._

“Dingus,” Robin said sharply. She scrubbed a hand over her face. “I know that you just lost your best friend. I know that you’re hurting and sad and in that headspace where nothing gets through to you. But you gotta try, okay? You can’t just stop living your life because Billy died.”

Steve made a protesting noise, “I wasn’t—”

“Yes, you were. I know that look, dingus. That look is you telling me that you don’t give a shit about your life anymore and that you’re going to go and do something reckless like fight a bunch of demodogs by yourself because you’re sad and I get it, okay? I get it. Grief does weird shit to our heads. But you have people here, who care about you.” 

Steve stared at her, trying to make sense of her face. He knew this was her in-advance attempt to head off his self-destructive tendencies. He wondered when Robin got to know him well enough that she could tell when he was beginning to spiral. 

Robin put her hands on either side of his face. “Steve. You are one of the most caring people I have ever had the privilege to be friends with, and I love that about you. But Billy wasn’t the sum of your whole life, dingus. He was one small part of a lot of people who care about you, and right now, everyone else is still there for you. Me and Nancy and Jonathan and Dustin and the rest of the party. Hell, even Hopper and Joyce Byers. Please. _Please,_ Steve. Don’t shut us out.”

He blinked a little at her. What she was saying was true. They were there for him, he knew. They would welcome him with open arms. They would sit with him and let him cry on their shoulders and ask about Billy and make Steve casseroles for days. But they didn’t really _get_ it. They hadn’t known Billy; some of them had never even seen his face. They wouldn’t understand what was so special about him. They wouldn’t be able to picture the adorable pout that Billy always pulled when Steve teased him about his man bun, or the freckles constantly spattered across his nose and cheeks because Billy was perpetually surfing. They wouldn’t know the sound of his voice, the quality of his gaze. They hadn’t sat through hours and hours of phone calls with him, companionable silence on the other end of the phone as they breathed with each other, just content knowing the other was on the line. They hadn’t known the worry and frustration of knowing Billy was trapped with his abusive prick of a father and there was nothing Steve could do about it. 

They didn’t get it.

“Okay, Robin,” Steve said hollowly. “I won’t.” 

Then he dropped his jeans and stepped out of them. 

Robin made a noise in the back of her throat and turned around. Then she turned back and hugged him tight. It was bony and her arms felt more like vices than anything, but for a moment, it made everything else feel a little bit less like the end of the world. Then Robin let him go and left the room. Steve stared at the door as it closed behind her for a bit and blinked. 

His eyelids must have weighed a literal ton, because it felt like Steve was lifting the weight of the world when he opened them back up. He felt like Atlas, struggling under something so burdensome that he would crack under it. 

Steve crawled into bed, barely bothering to turn the light off, and watched the darkness outside his window. 

* * *

Max stared at her dark ceiling. It was freckled and lumpy with stripes of paint that the painters hadn’t bothered cleaning up properly, a crack running through it from one corner. Her window was right next to her bed, but she was resolutely not looking at it. As soon as she had gotten home, she’d pulled the drapes shut. There was something about her window that made her feel exposed, like something was crawling over her skin, creeping up the back of her neck. 

Now, it was midnight. Susan had glared at Max through dinner, but Max had been stubbornly quiet. She had kept her head down and her eyes on the ground for the rest of the day, head spinning with too much information to bother starting another fight. 

Strangely enough though, now that her light was out and she was supposed to be sleeping, what was keeping her up was not the prospect of a demodog crashing through her window and trying to eat her, but Steve. 

She kept thinking about his expression, right before she got out of his car. It was almost…_betrayed._ She couldn’t get it out of her head. It held all the sick realization of the past month, all the knowledge that Billy had died cold and alone and helpless. Max had fought that realization; had wrestled it, choked it into submission, time and again. She had gotten good at hiding her tears, at taking her bone-crushing grief and stoking it into a blazing anger that she directed at Neil anytime she could. 

She wasn’t totally sure why she was mad at Neil, only that it felt right. Maybe it was because he had made life hell for Billy—for her, too. 

Billy would have warned her. Would have said, “Watch it, shitbird. Don’t get on his bad side.” 

That was the smart thing to do, she knew. Keep her head down and her mouth shut and get through the next three years with no fights and tight rules and an obedient, “yes, sir,” always ready on her tongue. Because of her, Billy hadn’t run away. Because once he was gone, Max would be right in Neil’s warpath, and that was the last place Billy had wanted her.

But Max didn’t want to play it smart. She wanted to _rage._ To scream and cry and smear all of Neil’s dirty deeds around town until the cops came for him and she wanted to watch his face as she did, wanted him to know that it was her, that it was the child that he’d always liked best ruining him, just because she could. Because Billy hadn’t been able to, had been trained to love Neil. But Max didn’t love Neil. He wasn’t her father. He was a fucking _imposter,_ and she was done with it. Max wanted to throw every doting comment, every Christmas present and quarter for the arcade, every “kiddo” and joke that he made back in his face because it didn’t mean shit when he beat her brother into a bloody pulp for being twenty minutes late and a little gay. Okay, a lot gay, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that Neil was a piece of shit and Max was tired of waiting for someone else to see it. 

She thought of Steve’s bat and imagined how nice it would feel to beat Neil’s face in with it. 

She thought of the chief. 

Max flipped onto her side, tossing her head a bit to find a comforting spot on her pillow. She wondered what kind of man Hopper was. She wondered if she walked into his office one day and sat down, if he would listen to her. She wondered what he would do if she called the station one night, frantic and crying and desperate. 

As Max fell asleep, she wondered if she could trust police chief Jim Hopper.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so a disclaimer about Steve's house. I have absolutely _no idea_ about the layout and where everything goes and shit, so I have come up with a floor plan for it on my own. It's sort of a little more open, where the front door leads to a hall, which leads to an open living room, with couches to the left, looking out the glass doors and the pool, and to the right a dining area and through a doorway from the dining area, the kitchen. There's a cutout in the kitchen wall that looks out over the living room. On the far side of the living room are the stairs to the second floor, where all the bedrooms are. There's more to it than that, but I think those are really the only rooms that I mention in this fic, so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ Sorry if that throws someone off.  
Also, I have no idea if there _is_ an ice cream shop in San Diego that sells pomegranate ice cream, that was just a detail I added for Billy's character.


	8. What the Water Gave Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from Florence and the Machine's What the Water Gave Me  
Tags have been updated. I didn't want to put them in until this chapter, since it's a little spoilery, so.  
TW for drowning and kidnapping.  
come find me on tumblr @withoutmonsters

The Camaro rumbled into the gas station. It pulled into a space and Billy cut the engine, taking the keys out. He popped open the door and locked it, going around the side of the car to open his gas tank. After filling up his car, he headed into the store. It was a dingy gas-station, filled with bright colors faded by the weather, smeared with a layer of dust from the desert, and made old by the outdated advertisements pasted on the windows. Billy made sure his bomber was covering the pistol tucked into his waistband.

After visiting the bathroom, he grabbed a full-sized Snickers and a couple suckers from the display near the register. His eyes flicked behind the cashier to the cigarettes. A month ago, he would’ve been happy to throw a pack of camels on the pile, but two weeks in a coma and another spent vomiting his guts up had kind of broken his nicotine addiction. He figured it would be prudent to jump on that and not start again.

The cashier scanned his items and looked at Billy. Billy glared back, meeting his gaze with a dead-eyed look. The cashier swallowed and said, “Is that all for you, today, sir?”

“Yeah.”

The cashier nodded. “That’ll be $5 even.”

Billy slapped down a five-dollar bill, trying to contain the tick in his wrist. He glanced out the window to the Camaro, then back to the cashier. 

“Have a good day, sir.”

Billy took the receipt and the candy and walked out, shouldering open the door. He got back in the Camaro and started it, listening to the purr of the engine to make sure nothing was wrong. His mom would often say that noise was the first indicator that something was wrong. _Look with your ears, Billy. Not your eyes._

Billy had kept his ears on his car’s engine since he was fourteen. He didn’t plan to stop now, even if he was sort of pushing it with a three-day almost non-stop drive across country. He pulled back onto the freeway and ripped open the Snickers with one hand. He took a bite and considered the last month of his life. It had been going pretty well, actually. Max had calmed down a little bit, so Billy hadn’t had to go and track her down at all hours of the day, finding her hanging out with people that Neil had specifically forbidden her to. And the summer had been long that year, which meant that Billy had been able to keep surfing well into September. That had been very nice, a good outlet for his frustrations. Billy hadn’t gotten into a fight all summer.

But then that night had happened and Billy had drowned. At least, that’s what the scientists had told him, but he was pretty fucking sure that they were the worst of liars, so it didn’t really matter. All he knew was that he hadn’t _drowned._ Billy Hargrove didn’t drown. He’d spent the last eight years of his life in the water and he was a good swimmer. He knew the beaches of San Diego like the back of his hand. Had been a lifeguard since he was fifteen, but had been helping out at the surf shop for far longer than that. He knew how to deal with riptides and rogue waves and surfboards breaking. He knew the protocol for sharks in the water and lightning storms. No, Billy hadn’t drowned.

He’d been pulled under. Yanked, like some fucking cheap horror movie. Pulled under and ripped away from his board. Tossed about the waves, with that _thing_ clenched around his ankle. It had felt like a tentacle, except there were no suckers on it. Just smooth, firm _muscle,_ clenched and tight and painful. It probably left a bruise, not that Billy would have seen it, as after that night, he was in a coma for two weeks.

Billy sighed, scanning the horizon. Waiting for dog-like shapes to come out of the gloom and go for the car. He was in the middle of nowhere Arizona, heading east, driving like a fucking maniac. He’d have to stop for food eventually, but he was good for a little while yet. You could go without one—food or sleep, but not both. Right now, Billy had chosen to go without food, but he would need to stop for both sometime. After leaving Cynthia’s at around 1 in the afternoon, he had driven straight through the day and into the night, trying to cover as much ground as possible. It was around 10 pm, now. 

_Keep going,_ a voice advised. _They’re far behind now. They won’t find you for a while yet. Rest into the day tomorrow so that they can’t swarm you as you are leaving._

The voice seemed to know quite a bit about the dog-things and what they were comfortable doing, and since Billy didn’t know shit about them, he put his faith in the voice and followed instructions. He could see the logic, too—since they were weaker in the day, it was smart to leave the hotel during that time. Since checking out took the longest, that would be when Billy was the best to ambush.

And he had to get to Hawkins before those _things_ did. 

It was a little shocking to Billy, how free the scientists were with their words, when they thought that he couldn’t hear them. He had gained a lot of information, just from lying in bed, listening at the vent in his wall to the guards on the other side of his door. And if some of that listening can come from some—_voice_—his head; well, he could ignore that little detail for now. 

The monster that had gotten him was alive—alive and stirring up trouble in _Hawkins, Indiana._ Where Steve was. Where his _sister_ was. There was no way in hell that Billy was going to let some fucking scientist keep him from saving his family. No fuckin way.

He was pretty sure that they had underestimated him. He got the feeling that, even if the lab was responsible for the voice in his head, they didn’t really know what it could do. It had quite helpfully guided him out, pressing a map of the facilities into his head and giving him directions when he got caught up in the adrenaline. Even so, it had been a mad, scrambling dash to get to a place where San Diego’s MKULtra agents couldn’t find him. Where those _monsters_ couldn’t find him.

He wasn’t totally sure what the lab planned to do with him once he recovered fully, but he wasn’t really planning on finding out. It didn’t really make sense that they would kill him after spending time and money keeping him alive, but he really wouldn’t put it past them, considering the other things that they had done.

The head scientist (agent? Billy knew they were government, but they wore a white lab coat) told him the mechanics of his “accident;” that the sudden change in pressure had knocked him out and he’d gotten hypothermia from being in the ocean for so long. The combination of abuses to his body had sent his brain into survival mode, shutting down any unnecessary functions. They thought that something had hit Billy’s head and the resulting brain damage had caused a coma. He hadn’t _felt_ brain damaged, though his last memory was a vague shape coming out of the gloom and latching onto his face. _That_ was when he had passed out. 

He munched on his Snickers and considered what it had been. It was something he had been doing for the past week and a half. The lab wouldn’t tell him precisely what it was, but his eavesdropping abilities told him it wasn’t man-made and wasn’t from this world.

Fuckin crazy, right? Not from this world? It sounded like a bad science fiction movie, but he couldn’t deny that whatever it was, he had never seen it before. At first, he’d tried to say it was a giant squid—but they were deep-water creatures, and he had still been in the bay. Also, they didn’t particularly have a habit of snaking a tentacle out of the gloom to snatch random surfers. That, coupled with the lack of suckers had confirmed for Billy that it wasn’t a giant squid. _But,_ his brain said. _It could have been something else. Something you don’t know about yet._ Yeah, something else.

An otherworldly something else. He had spent a good chunk of time researching sea creatures that were like what had grabbed him, but it was just about nothing. Nothing from the sea was like what he was describing. So, eventually, he had been forced to admit that maybe, just _maybe,_ whatever it was wasn’t from the San Diego bay—wasn’t from the ocean at all. Billy still couldn’t exactly think, “from another dimension,” but he was getting there.

If that wasn’t on his mind, it was Steve. Steve—who must be going out of his mind with worry. It was October now. It had been _weeks_ since Billy had talked to Steve, which would have made Billy sick with worry if the situation had been reversed. They hadn’t gone more than two days without speaking to each other, and that was when they were fighting. And they hadn’t been fighting. In fact, Billy was making headway in convincing Steve to fly out to San Diego. It wasn’t like he didn’t have the money—Steve’s dad was the owner of a string of businesses, making him a small-time millionaire. Steve could have flown to San Diego and back every day for a year before his dad told him to stop. No, it wasn’t that. It was something else, something that had happened to Steve in his senior year. Before that, he and Billy would jokingly plan their dream getaway—looking at hotels, driving routes, locations. Talking about what would happen once Billy finally, _finally_ turned eighteen and he could get away from his asshole of a father (his birthday had passed when he’d been in the lab, so happy fuckin’ birthday to him). But after last fall, Steve hadn’t responded well when Billy had brought the subject up.

At first, Billy had thought he’d done something wrong. Gone too far, gotten a little too excited. It was an exercise in restraint for Billy, talking to Steve. They usually had a phone call every few days, with texting in between, and DMed each other memes and other stuff from social media. If it was up to Billy, he would spend all his time on the phone with Steve. After Max had teased him about it, Billy had suddenly become conscious of what he sounded like on the phone with Steve—enthusiastic, _bubbly._ Billy wasn’t bubbly. No way. No way at all. So he tried to tone it back, even if it was sometimes a little impossible for him. He’d dropped the vacation idea for a while, but now was back on Steve’s back for it. It had been eight years since he had seen Steve in person. He was itching to meet face-to-face again.

And now, finally, he would. His heart kicked his chest and he tried to contain the butterflies in his stomach. Granted, they wouldn’t exactly be meeting under the best circumstances, considering that there was a monster in Hawkins that Billy was planning on stopping no matter what, but that was a little irrelevant to his day-dreaming fantasies.

Billy finished his Snickers, tossing the wrapper next to the shotgun on his passenger seat. He knew that it was stupid to drive with a gun fully out when he didn’t even have a permit for it, but he wasn’t taking any chances. Whatever those things were that had attacked him back in San Diego weren’t allergic to sunlight and were damn fast. He would keep a damn loaded shotgun on his seat for the rest of his life if it meant that he was better prepared to fight those dog-like things off. The cops would just have to deal should they pull him over. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm making Billy quit smoking because it's BAD for you and it's 2020 and that's a well-known, well documented fact, so he has no excuse. However, I DO know that nicotine addictions can be broken if someone is very sick for a period of a few weeks because my aunt got pneumonia, was horribly sick for like, 3 weeks, and then when she went to smoke when she recovered, was revolted by the taste of the cigarette and never went back, so. It can be done. I also didn't not have the capacity to write Billy dealing with breaking a nicotine addiction on top of everything else, so this is my solution. Also, I didn't actually have Billy paying for his Snickers when I originally wrote the scene, and reread it, realized that, and had to edit it so he doesn't just walk out the door with stolen candy. 
> 
> In my head, the reason that Steve sort of shuts down talking about going out to San Diego is because the second attack from the Upside Down happens and Steve all the sudden has a bunch of kids to look after, and he gets separation anxiety from the thought of leaving them to go cross-country.
> 
> Guys I think this is the first time I haven't use a page break in a chapter!


	9. In Honor and Danger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from Neko Case's "At Last."  
tw for mentioned ptsd  
Come find me on tumblr @withoutmonsters  
I have to say, this is one of my favorite chapters. Also, disclaimer: I know nothing about surfing, I am desert folk and any rules/things that you should and shouldn't do have been taken from the internets and should be read with a grain of salt.

Steve spent the day sleeping. He had gone the whole night curled up in bed, eyes glued to the window and waiting for the telltale clicks that came with the demodogs. He had almost _wanted_ it, had wanted the excuse to fight something, to rage and cry and recklessly spend his energy. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Steve knew that, should a demodog actually appear, he was just as likely to sit down and cry or have a panic attack than fight it, but at the moment, his brain was numb with grief and looking for an excuse.

Seeing the dead one yesterday had been bad enough. It had been months since Steve had actually slept _well,_ but at least his nightmares had faded sometime in April. Most nights, he paced his house for a good fifteen minutes, checking and rechecking locks, peering out of windows, worrying about what he would do if the demodogs came through the sliding glass doors. 

As a kid, he hadn’t thought much of them. He’d liked dozing in front of them in the afternoon, when the sunlight streamed through and warmed the carpet under his feet and he’d felt like a lazy cat, drowsy and sleepy and luxurious. And on the days when his mother was too busy to watch him outside to make sure he didn’t wander off into the woods that bordered his yard, he would sit in front of them and plaster his face to the glass and watch the pool, mesmerized by the shadows in the water. 

But now, they felt like a chink in his armor. Scratch that, a _hole_ in his armor, gaping and raw and oozing pus. All he could think about was the fact that he had no way to barricade them; no sheet of plywood placed over them or boards hammered over the walls would stop the demodogs from diving right through the glass and into his living room. It was a glaring weakness, and it made Steve itchy with obsessive worry. After the second attack by the Upside Down last November, he’d wake up sweating, panting and gasping and spasming, convinced he’d heard shattering glass and the high shrieks of the ‘dogs. Steve had eventually taken to carrying his bat around the house, leaning it against the couch when he went to read. Sometimes, he stayed up until four or five in the morning, gripping the bat and staring out the doors, frozen. 

It didn’t help that the doors looked right out onto the pool. Logically, he knew that Barb hadn’t died in _his_ pool, just the replica of it in the Upside Down, but emotionally, that didn’t really translate. All he could think about was that Barb’s life had ended in it, whichever side she’d been on. It was a nauseating piece knowledge that had just about ruined the pool for him. 

And seeing the demodog yesterday, dead as it had been, had been a sort of sick shock. Its flower-petal-face had been deeply damaged, bashed in on one side, rows and rows of shark teeth caught and dug into its own flesh, black bloody ichor splattered and rayed around it like a corona from the sun. It had fallen on its side, curled up with claws tucked in. The smell had been rank, but Max hadn’t seemed to notice. In fact, despite her sass to Hop, she hadn’t seemed like she’d been entirely…there, her eyes holding a wild sort of light, like she was barely keeping herself contained. 

When Steve had stepped into the bus, he had tried to curb his memories of last year, of crouching low against a seat with Robin screaming as she looked up at the face of a demodog getting ready to plunge down and eat them all. Of stepping onto the gasoline-soaked ground, knowing that fortune didn’t favor the stupid twice. He had been fully prepared to die that night, if it meant the others would survive, but it hadn’t made it any _easier._

After El had closed the gate, the bodies of the demodogs had died but not disappeared. It turned out that, while some of them had been able to make it through the tunnels to try to attack Hop and El at the lab, not all of them had. In fact, the majority had been scattered across the expanse of the Indiana wilderness, some in the tunnels and some in the woods, a few around town. Hop had spent a lot of time looking for them. Originally, they had tried to burn the bodies, as the lab had been doing, but the slime that the creatures secreted was at least partially resistant to fire, and they didn’t _stop_ secreting it when they died. It seemed their natural process of decay was actually dissolving into slime. So Hop had turned to lime to hurry the process along. It had been Lucas’s idea to use the bus, but Steve had to admit it was smart. The back of the bus had no wheels anymore, so it was practically on the ground anyway, and it was much easier to conceal than a pit in the middle of nowhere. 

Since the pumpkins had rotted when the Mindflayer had been alive, Hop had naturally assumed that the slime-pit would also poison any plants it touched, so they had had to be very careful what they were doing with the bodies. 

Sometime around five pm, just as the sky was beginning to flush pink with the sunset, Steve was rudely woken by furious hammering on his door. He groggily shifted, turning over in his bed and staring at his bedroom door, as if he could see out into the hall, down the stairs, across the living room and foyer, and onto his front stoop to see who was knocking at such an ungodly time. 

_Bam bam bam bam bam!_

“Goddammit,” he snarled, throwing aside the blankets and stumbling out of his bed, drained and tired and not feeling rested at all. 

He stormed downstairs, swearing and muttering the whole time, hoping that whoever was on the other side of the door would hear his footsteps and tremble at his rage. He threw his door open right in the middle of a third bout of hammering, coming face to face with Nancy. Her eyes went wide when she saw him in all of his mussed glory: bags the size of suitcases under his eyes, his hair plastered to one side of his head, boxers twisted about his waist and yesterday’s shirt still stained with tears. 

Her face transformed from shocked to compassionate in .2 seconds. “Steve,” she said.

“What do you want?” He snarled.

She opened her mouth in startled shock, a little offended. “We’re supposed to patrol, Steve.”

Steve immediately deflated, feeling bad for snapping at her. He scrubbed a hand down one side of his face, trying to get rid of dried tear tracks before she saw them. He knew that he failed though, because she was looking at him with her particular brand of caring pity and it felt like a knife, cutting through the tissues of his heart. “I’m sorry, Nancy. I was just, uh, getting ready. You can wait inside if you want.” He stepped to the side so that his body was no longer blocking the doorway. 

Nancy walked in, her eyes too knowing on his face. “Robin called me last night.”

“Oh, she did?” Steve asked, shutting the door and beginning to make his way back to his room. “What did she say?” He had a feeling he already knew, but just in case Robin _hadn’t_ gone smearing his personal business to everyone he’d ever met, he didn’t want to give it away. 

“She told me about Billy.” 

Steve stiffened. Of course, she had. She couldn’t just leave it up to him to tell his friends when he was ready, oh no—she had to go around telling _Nancy Wheeler,_ the last person that Steve wanted knowing about Billy. 

“Steve,” Nancy started. He walked faster, taking the stairs two at a time, trying to get away from her big guilty eyes. Nancy hadn’t ever really stopped trying to make up for leading Steve on for a whole year, even though Steve had gotten over it months ago. He had even gone so far as to make friends with Jonathan Byers. Steve genuinely respected the guy—he was the kind of sibling that Steve would want to be, had he ever had younger brother or sister. Generous and loving and attentive to all their needs over anything else. He imagined having a sibling like that would be like being wrapped in a warm blanket all the time, cozy and comforting and protective. 

“Steve!” Nancy called, and grabbed his hand. 

Steve turned with the momentum and stopped abruptly so that Nancy nearly ran into him. “What?” He snapped. 

She sighed. “Look Steve, I know that I wasn’t ever very attentive when it came to Billy. I know that most of the time, I didn’t really listen to you when you talked about him and for that, I’m sorry. I was just,” she waved a vague hand, “jealous and tired of hearing about this phantom presence in your life. I’m sorry, okay?” 

Steve studied her face, frowning slightly. “Jealous?”

Nancy bit her lip and looked away. “Yeah, jealous.” 

“Why?”

Nancy choked, “Why? What do you mean, why?”

“Why were you jealous?” Steve enunciated a little bit too slowly, but Nancy didn’t seem to take offense. 

She gave him a look that said that he really should know this, but elaborated anyway. “Steve, he was a bigger part of your life than _I_ was. I was your girlfriend and we spent practically every day together—we, we went on study dates and ate lunch together and you got a C in AP Biology because of me—and you still talked about _him_ more. You were always talking about him. In the morning you would show me funny memes that he sent you or would talk about how he did on a test that he took the day before, or would brag about him breaking his personal record for surfing. I swear, you knew more about his school work than yours just because you paid more attention to him! It wasn’t that you were stupid in school—it was that you just spent all your attention on _Billy._ You didn’t have room for anything else. He—he was always this ghost that hovered over you. Even if he wasn’t here physically, if you hurt, Billy hurt, and if he got hurt, you did, too.”

Steve stared at her. It was weird to hear about his relationship with Billy from an outsider’s perspective. It sounded—codependent, he realized, but couldn’t quite make himself care yet. It was true—he _had_ spent a lot of his energy on Billy. He didn’t regret it in the slightest. Billy had been his lifeline through some of the darkest times in his life and he knew the same went for the other boy, too. They had been utterly dedicated to each other despite the distance, and he wouldn’t have changed it for the world. Hearing Nancy talk about it sort of clued him into something else, though. It hadn’t just been Jonathan that had spurred her to emotional indiscretion—maybe it had been Billy, too. Maybe she had gotten tired of realizing that she would always come second for Steve when it came to devotion and wanted something a little more…potent. It wasn’t that Steve loved Nancy less than he had loved Billy, it had just been…different. Perhaps she hadn’t _liked_ the difference, although Steve couldn’t fathom why. 

“Steve,” Nancy continued, “I’m not blaming you for it. For the first time in my life, I get it. I just happened to start to understand it _after_ I got together with Jonathan, and I’m sorry that I hurt you along the way. But Robin was right, okay? We are all here for you. You just have to let us in.”

Steve’s shoulders slumped. “Thanks, Nance.” 

Nancy gave him a small smile, meant to be comforting, and stepped in, hugging him tightly. Steve hugged her back for a moment, relaxing slightly. Whatever her faults, Nancy Wheeler gave a kickass hug. 

She pushed him away. “Alright, but now go take a shower. You stink,” she wrinkled her nose slightly. 

Steve laughed a little and headed to his bathroom. 

He emerged from the bathroom half an hour later, rubbing his head with a towel, another wrapped firmly around his bottom half. He crossed the hall to his room and pulled on clothes much like the ones he wore the day before. Since Max had been attacked by a demodog, they knew they were out there. They just had to figure out where they were coming from. And _how,_ for that matter. 

He grabbed his bat and shut his bedroom door, calling, “Nance?”

“Down here,” she returned, and Steve followed her voice to the couch, where she was sitting, staring at the sliding glass doors and the pool. 

Steve shifted. “Horrible, isn’t it? How exposed it feels now.”

“Yeah,” Nancy huffed. “The woods. It feels like something is constantly watching me when I’m over here. I can barely look outside my window, anymore, Steve. It’s like, if I do, there will be something there and I don’t know if I can…I don’t know how to deal with it, anymore. Like, when the Demogorgon attacked Barb, I just…I was so _angry._ I didn’t care if it could kill me. I just cared that it had killed one of my best friends in the entire world and I couldn’t breathe with the need to make sure that didn’t happen to anyone else.” She looked at him, tears filming her eyes, “I suppose you sort of get it now, huh?”

“Yeah,” Steve said, sitting down next to her and looking at his hands. Chapped, raw skin over knuckles and callouses from the bat. “Except it’s almost worse, because there’s nothing that I can attack to make it feel better. It was just Billy being stupid.” 

“What happened, anyway?”

“He drowned. Took his board out at night, which is something that you should never do. You’re always supposed to go with at least one other person so that they can get help if something happens to you. And night surfing is just…not smart, anyway, because it’s harder to see anything. But he never really cared much about rules, anyway, or his safety.”

Nancy leaned her shoulder against his. “I’m sorry, Steve. I know that it doesn’t make it better, but I _am_ sorry that he’s dead.”

He returned the pressure, grateful that he had someone here who knew what it felt like. “Thanks.” They were silent for a few moments, letting their vision blur and their minds drift until Steve suddenly said, “I can’t swim, anymore.” 

Nancy looked at him. 

“In the pool, I mean. Barb died there. I don’t care if it was in the Upside Down, it was still my pool. It feels almost like a betrayal, of you and her, to have fun in it again.”

“Yeah, I know how you feel.” Nancy said. “I almost didn’t date you, after the Demogorgon died.”

Steve frowned. “What?”

“Barb didn’t really approve of you. You were popular; you hung out with Tommy H. and Carol, for heaven’s sake. You were King Steve. And Barb didn’t really like how they treated her, and she especially didn’t like how _I_ treated her when I was around you.” Nancy’s voice wobbled a little bit. “It felt, I don’t know, disloyal to her to date you, after.”

Steve studied her as she picked at her cuticles, tense and sad and still scarred from the knowledge that her best friend had died, dejected and sad and feeling alone.

_Is that what I’ll look like, in two years?_ Steve wondered. _Like something has been taken out of me and nothing can put it back?_ He hated the thought. But it was also comforting, in a way. To know that he had loved Billy enough that even two years after his death, he still would make his mark on Steve. Even if that mark was a kind of heaviness to his shoulders, downturned and tired. 

“Then why did you?”

Nance shrugged. “Because you were so _happy_ to see me. You would look at me with this beaming grin on your face, and for a few minutes, I could just…forget. I could put down my loneliness, for a little while.”

Steve opened his mouth to tell her he was still happy to see her when his phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket, frowning down at the screen. It read: HOPPER. 

“Hop?”

“Where are you, kid?”

“Um, my house, why do you ask?”

Hopper sighed, “You and Nancy were supposed to be patrolling, already. And you’re supposed to text before you start.”

“Sorry, Hop. My fault, I held us up. We’re leaving now,” Steve said, feeling a little bit guilty for worrying him. 

“Good,” Hopper said. “And keep a sharp eye out, y’hear? If there was a demodog yesterday in the middle of the day, there will be lots tonight.” 

“Will do, Hop,” Steve said, and hung up. He looked at Nancy. “That’s our cue to get our asses in gear.” 

Nancy smiled. “My car or yours?”

“Mine,” Steve said. “If it gets destroyed by an errant demodog, at least my parents won’t be home for a few weeks to find out.”

Nancy laughed. Steve stood, offering his hand to her with a flourish, making her giggle. She took it, grinning up at him for a second, “You’re an idiot, Steve Harrington.” 

* * *

For as much of a good mood they’d left with, a bad mood permeated the neighborhood when they began their patrol. The night was cold, stars shining a sterile bright white above them. Steve had fired off a text to Hopper when they’d parked, and now they made their slow way down a street, eyeing the houses with a stiff suspicion. They were silent as the sun finished sinking behind the horizon; porchlights turned on and bedroom windows dimmed as people began to wind down from the day. Somewhere, a stray dog howled.

Nancy tensed, her hand on the gun in her waistband. The other held a thick hammer, the head double-sided and good for bludgeoning. She didn’t like the hammer has much as the gun, but aside from a direct killing shot to the chest or a _very_ well-aimed maiming shot to one their legs, bullets didn’t slow the demodogs down much. A machine gun could take care of business, but Nancy wasn’t about to wander around the neighborhood with an AR-15. Steve had been worried about Nancy taking just the gun, because the ‘dogs were fast and sleek and hard targets to hit, and if one of them hit Nancy, she was basically defenseless. Nancy argued that a gun was still good, because it was a way to injure the ‘dogs without coming into close contact with them, which was, Steve did have to admit, sort of the goal. So they had compromised and Nancy had brought both the gun and the hammer. 

Now they paced the streets with a wary alertness, heads jerking at the slightest movement or sound. 

“God, I hate this,” Nancy muttered. “Feeling like one is just going to come out of nowhere.”

“Well, they sort of are,” Steve pointed out plaintively, and Nancy shot him a look. 

Even though he was being facetious, Steve knew what she meant. Even in his house, exposed and tactically impossible to guard as it was, he had felt a direction that they would come from. If there was an attack, he knew there would be no demodogs coming from behind him. But out here, under the harsh stars and darkness like a blinding blanket smothering his senses, they could be coming from anywhere. Anywhere at all, and that was even scarier than the sliding glass doors. 

He took a deep, settling breath, and said, “I got your back.”

Nancy shot him a grateful smile that felt…truthful. Like she was smiling at him because she believed him, not because she was letting him know she heard him. It felt good to know that Nancy fundamentally trusted him to keep her safe. 

A chittering clicking echoed from the space between two houses. They were right on the edge of town, where people’s yards bled into the woods, spaced far apart and distant, like they weren’t really _neighbors,_ just people who had coincidentally settled in the same vague area. 

“There!” Nancy darted forward, gun in hand and cocked. Steve followed, half-turned to check to make sure none of the ‘dogs had gotten smart and decided to circle back. 

The chittering echoed again, dissolving into a high, shrieking howl, and goosebumps erupted on Steve’s skin. There was nothing like that sound, nothing like hearing it and knowing, _knowing,_ deep in your bones, that they were there. 

The first demodog rushed out of the darkness and Nancy fired, a sharp pop in the stillness of the night. The bullet chewed through the ‘dog’s shoulder, and she fired again, two more rounds that plowed into it and brought it, finally, down to ground. 

The next came from the side, much closer than the first. Steve stepped in and swung, putting every ounce of strength into the hit. The bat took the demodog in the head and snapped its neck. The thing collapsed, but another was already there, taking its place and opening its mouth wide for a roar of challenge. 

Steve stuck the bat down its throat. Probably not the smartest move, he knew, but its mouth was so _open,_ like it was begging for something down it. Steve knew the ‘dog probably had something in mind like a nice juicy piece of flesh, but it would just have to put up with a mouthful of nails, instead. It gagged, contorting, and he kicked, breaking a leg. He wrenched the bat and swung at the next ‘dog, and the next and the next. 

They came in swarms, twos and threes darting out from the shadows to tear at Steve and Nancy, diving and slashing and cutting. Nancy tossed the gun aside. She had a quick-reloader in her pocket, but she clearly was too busy to use it. They’d find the gun after, anyway. Nancy grabbed the hammer, putting it to good use, smashing with quick, efficient movements.

The hammer was good because if you hit a demodog just right, they’d go down with one blow. They didn’t really have brains, because they were just part of a larger body of the Mindflayer, but, as near as Hopper could tell, they did still have some sort of nervous system to control the individual dogs. Get them in the right place, and those systems would go dark, and then that ‘dog was down for the count. 

Nancy hadn’t quite got the hang of it yet, but she was getting there. 

The stream of ‘dogs began to taper off, coming in ones and twos now. They were getting warier, Steve could see. The Mindflayer had probably thought to overwhelm them with numbers, catch them off guard and then one ‘dog would probably get in a lucky swipe. But it hadn’t worked out that way, for whatever reason, and now it was reevaluating, pulling back the demodogs for a retreat. 

They began to turn tail and run, sprinting into the darkness of the forest.

“We can’t let them get away!” Nancy shouted, recklessly darting after them. 

“Nance!” Steve called out, but followed anyway, because he knew there was no stopping her. 

They dashed into the woods, hot on the ‘dogs trail, stumbling blindly when a root caught their foot. After a few minutes, Nancy slowed, breathless and confused. 

“Where did they _go?”_ She asked. 

Steve shrugged. “I don’t know.” At her look, he said helplessly, “I mean, come on, Nance. When they’re quiet, they’re practically invisible. And they’re _fast._ We can’t exactly expect to keep up with them on foot.”

Nancy huffed a breath. “Well, just keep looking. We have to figure out where they’re coming from.” 

Steve wanted to argue, wanted to say that they could come back in the daytime when it was lighter and much easier to see, but he didn’t. She was right; they _did_ need to figure out how the hell the Mindflayer was unleashing his Lovecraftian monsters on the world, and soon. Their best bet, no matter how far-fetched, would be to follow the demodogs. 

Steve pulled out flashlights from the backpack on his back and handed one to Nancy. She took it and resolutely marched off into the woods, eyes fixed on the bright circle of light it provided. Steve followed her example.

After a few minutes of looking, he heard her call, “Steve!”

“What?” He shouted back, directing his flashlight towards the sound.

“Come here!” 

“I don’t know where you are,” he hollered. 

“Just follow my voice!” 

He did, grumbling a little bit, until he came to a tree. Nancy was standing in front of it, watching it warily. 

“What,” he asked. 

Nancy glanced at him and then back at the tree, like she was afraid to take her eyes off it. “There was a portal, here.” 

Steve stepped back. “What?”

Nancy nodded. “When the Demogorgon was alive, that’s how it got in and out. Through these little rips. It’s how it took Will and Barb.” 

“But,” Steve frowned. “I thought El closed the portal.” 

“Yeah, the main gate. She opened it, which allowed the Mindflayer to come through and open smaller ones.” 

“So,” Steve licked his lips. “If there was a small portal here that the demodogs can come through, then that means…”

Nancy met his eyes. “That means that there’s another gate open, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, Steve, you oblivious boy, you.  
Also, a reminder that the lay out of the house that I imagined Steve had is not even _remotely_ canon, so bear with me.


	10. Into That Silent Sea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for a brief use of the f-slur, Neil's abusive ass, some suicidal ideation, and two panic attacks. Man, I really put Billy through it this chapter.   
Chapter title is from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's _Rime of the Ancient Marinere._  
Come find me on tumblr @withoutmonsters

Billy had woken up in a white room with absolutely no memory of how he had gotten there. The room had been bright, lights hurting his eyes, and lab coats lurked off to the side. A woman had approached him, saying, “Billy? Billy Hargrove?”

He grunted his assent and tried to turn his head, but there was only blinding pain that had whited out his vision for a few long moments. He’d been extra careful, after that. They told him that they were scientists, part of San Diego’s lab, and that he’d been in an accident. That they needed to keep him there for a while for _observation._ A voice in his head told him that that was suspicious, and he couldn’t quite disagree with it, especially after they told him the nature of his “accident.”

The next few days had been filled with vomiting and sickness, in between long periods of unconsciousness. Once he had regained enough coherence to articulate _why_ these people felt so suspicious to him, he’d begun to plan. That’s where the voice in his head came in. It wasn’t, as far as Billy knew, part of him, but if so, he didn’t know _what it was._ It didn’t sound like him, didn’t feel like him, pushing thoughts into his mind at random intervals. They were all smart—ideas that made sense to him, but…there was something _wrong_ about it.

When he had realized his door was guarded by soldiers with loose tongues, he’d wished for sharper hearing to eavesdrop on them. Suddenly, their voices sharpened from the occasional pitch on the other side of the door to coherent sentences: “—yeah, but what do you think is going to happen? Those fuckers will come for him eventually. Valentino said—”

“I heard what Valentino said, dipshit. That’s not going to happen. It doesn’t know he’s here.”

“What if it does? They all insist they have it under control, that they know what it’s doing but what if they don’t? What if it knows more than we think?”

“Oh, shut up. It’s an animal. Sure, an interdimensional one, but an animal nonetheless. He’ll be safe here. They put up extra safeguards.”

_Interdimensional?_ Billy had thought, _what the fuck?_

He listened intently to what they were saying. Gathering information was a lot easier now that he could hear them; their tongues were always wagging, spreading some new bit of information that Billy was very sure they didn’t want him to have.

And the voice in his head guided him through it all. Provided context for what they were saying until the scope of the situation was laid out before him, dizzying in its implications. A monster had attacked him, but the lab’s soldiers had interrupted it. The monster hadn’t had time to complete what it had wanted to do to Billy, which was, apparently, _possessing_ him. It wanted to force a part of itself into his head so that it could control him, like some puppet.

The thought had been so sickening that he’d rolled off his bed and vomited, his stomach spasming and throat burning.

The next piece of information that it told him had been almost as bad: that, in order to combat whatever the monster had done to him, the lab had put something in him, too. That’s what the voice was.

A _creature,_ living _inside of him._ Panic had risen, steady as the ocean waves and wiped out his vision, seizing his muscles and freezing his mind until—like a person dusting away a cobweb, the voice had wiped the panic from his mind. For a moment, he saw the lab’s room with hyper-clarity: the cracks in the walls, the squares of the ceiling, the IV that still stood next to his bed and the sheets rucked up from his flailing. A shadow hovered over him, the vague shape of a head and bright, bright eyes watching him.

_Billy,_ it had said.

His mind flickered acknowledgement and it sensed it.

_I will help you escape. I will deliver you back, safe and sound._

“Oh, yeah? And how the fuck are you going to do that?”

He could sense its disdain. _Why do you think you can hear the guards now, boy? I am endless; an atom and the sun and the infinite universe in one. Do not underestimate my abilities._ It had pressed itself into his mind, overwhelming his very _self,_ alien and vast and so all-encompassing that he had actually passed out.

He’d awakened back in his bed, sheets tucked around him and the vomit gone.

_Now are you ready to hear me out?_

It was impatient, he sensed. It wanted out as much as he did.

Yes, he told it. I am ready.

_Good._ Then it had showed him its plans, pressed into his mind so that the knowledge was just suddenly _there,_ like it was a display that the voice had suddenly pulled the sheet off of. So Billy had prepared and watched and waited, and when it told him to go, he went.

After Billy had gotten out of the lab, dressed in a guard’s uniform and cursing his inability to fit through the air ducts, he’d looked south. He had recognized the part of town they were in—on the very edges of San Diego, on a large plot of land fenced in and locked up tight. Billy held the guard’s gun, but didn’t want to use it. It was an automatic machine gun, but that was as far as Billy could tell. The grounds were strangely empty, and while Billy was pretty damn sure that there were security cameras catching his every movement, no one came out to meet him. He made his way to the front gate, warily watching it. It was open about two feet, the lock broken and the booth to the side of it splattered in blood. Billy’s eyes widened, taking in the smears of red on the window. A high eerie pitch filled the air, keening out of the booth. He brought the gun up, aiming for whatever the fuck was making that noise.

He crept forward, through the open gate, and came to a stop in front of the doorway. There was _something_ inside of it, chowing down on the guard that was supposed to be operating the controls to the gate. It was the size of a large dog, shiny with some sort of slime, muscular and lean. Billy barely registered the long claws sunk deep into the guard’s belly because all he could look at was the head.

The whole thing opened up into a maw, a weirdly shaped mouth ripping out the corpse’s throat. Billy made a noise in the back of his throat, strangled and alarmed and confused. The thing turned its head and opened that mouth, flower petals extending out to reveal rows and rows and rows of teeth, pointing to the black gullet of its throat. The monster shrieked.

Billy had lit the fucker up, snapping the gun up and clenching the trigger. He had riddled the dog-thing with bullets, pointing the muzzle into the mouth and letting the dull _ratatatatat_ of the machine gun articulate the sheer horror that the last few weeks had been.

_Run, Billy,_ the voice whispered. _Run, run ‘til you can’t stop; run ‘til your heart beats its way out of your chest, until your lungs atrophy and your legs fail and your body rots. Run, run! Run for your sister, for your lover. Run for your life!_

He ran, sprinting past the kiosk and the road, legs pumping and heart beating and breath rasping in his chest until it felt like it was choking him but he didn’t stop, couldn’t stop because he still heard that voice, still felt phantom breath on the back of his neck, slipping down his spine and pushing pushing pushing until he was stumbling and tripping and falling to a stop in an alleyway between two warehouses, shuddering and spasming and coughing until he nearly blacked out.

It was only after he’d caught his breath when he’d thought, _wait, my lover?_

The voice had kind of given him a mental shrug, then pushed images of Steve into his brain. _Yes, your lover. His is, is he not?_

Billy had sputtered out loud, so shocked by the implication that he forgot that he didn’t need to answer with his mouth. 

“No, he’s not!”

_No? But you hold him in such high esteem._

“Just because I love Steve doesn’t mean that I’m in love with Steve, okay?”

The voice had shrugged again, clearly not believing him. _Okay._

Billy hadn’t ever really acknowledged his feelings. They had always been _just friends,_ as though that bond hadn’t defined Billy for the majority of his life. If he’d wanted something else, something _different,_ he had never let himself imagine it, because once he wanted it, he wasn’t going to be able to stop. And wanting something and not getting it just made everything worse.

Billy had headed towards the shop to figure out what the absolute _fuck_ was going on. Cynthia had been so shocked to see him that she had cried—which was weird, since Billy had never seen her cry before. Then she had told him that he had been declared dead three weeks ago. That they had found his _body,_ had hosted a funeral.

He had stared at her for a few moments, “You’re shitting me.” 

She had vigorously shaken her head and then told him everything.

And _everything_ had been a lot. How he had been declared “missing” for two days before they found his body washed up on a beach two miles north of San Diego. How they had said that he’d officially died of drowning after being exhausted from hypothermia. How his family had held a funeral for him.

“Neil gave the eulogy,” she told him. “It was such utter bullshit.”

Billy believed it. His father had always been all about appearances—he had it stuck in his head that if they looked like a nice happy family, they would be. Billy couldn’t count the times when Neil lectured him about the neighbors across the street were looking out their window again and Billy couldn’t _go out there dressed like that, you look like a fuckin fag you piece of shit, you’re a disappointment dressing like that._

It wasn’t even that bad, to be honest. Sure, Billy kept his hair long, but it wasn’t _just_ to annoy his father. He genuinely liked the way he looked with long hair. It wasn’t like it was that long—just to his shoulders. On hot summer days, he kept it in a man bun, which Steve had made fun of on multiple occasions. Billy had always protested about what else he was going to do with it—a ponytail? Yeah, that would look _real_ good.

And the earring, believe it or not, had not exactly been intentional. He’d gotten it on a drunken dare one night hanging out with his friends. They’d used Billy’s lighter to sterilize a needle and then had stuck it through his earlobe. He had been drunk enough that he hadn’t really felt the pain. They stuck a hoop in it and Billy had used rubbing alcohol to clean it for the next few weeks.

But he _had_ bought the spike to spite Neil. And spite Neil it did, on many occasions.

“So, the funeral was bullshit. What else happened?” Billy asked.

She told him that Neil had up and moved the family just a few days after the funeral.

“They been gone about a week and a half, now,” Cynthia said. “Sold the house real fast. Rented a moving truck and left like a bat outta hell.”

Billy cursed, then cursed some more. “Do you know where they went?”

Cynthia smoothed her lip with her teeth and nodded. “Max came in here, complaining about what a hardass Neil was being. Said he was draggin’ her back to an old hometown of his. Indiana? Somewhere in Indiana.”

Billy swore and hit the chair with his hand. “That damn motherfucker!”

Cynthia raised an eyebrow. “You know where?"

Billy nodded. “Yeah, I know where. It’s the getting there that’s the trouble.”

If Billy was supposed to be dead, he couldn’t exactly hop on a flight to Hawkins.

Cynthia popped a thumb behind her. “Take the Camaro.”

Billy stared at her, then to the shadows in the garage. “It’s still here? You have it? I thought that he woulda sold it.”

Cynthia shook her head. “Forgot about it, probably. He hasn’t set foot in this garage in years.”

Billy was up out of his seat and pulling off the cover to his car before she could finish. The Camaro sat, deep black in the gloom, all the blue washed out by the darkness. Billy ran one hand down the hood, not even bothering to restrain the giddy smile on his face. He turned back to Cynthia. “Keys?” he asked.

She was smirking at him, a light gleaming in her eyes. “Yeah, boy, I got the keys. I also got a lot of your clothes.”

Billy frowned.

“Neil was tryna throw ‘em out. Max brought me as many boxes as she could sneak out of the house.”

Bitterness twisted Billy’s mouth. Of course his old man wouldn’t even bother to go through his stuff. Of course he just took the easy way out. Billy clenched a fist but didn’t voice his disdain.

“They’re all up there, if you want to look.”

Billy nodded, and Cynthia led him upstairs to her apartment. It was small and a little dusty, but neat. Cynthia hadn’t ever had much patience for a mess. She led him back to her very small guest room where Billy had stayed more than once when his father had kicked him out. Three boxes sat on the floor near the bed, a little bit battered, not even taped on top.

Cynthia waved a hand at them, “Have at it.”

Billy crouched down near the first box and moved the flap. It wasn’t even full—just a few shirts and some jeans stacked on top of each other. He stared down at them, not really registering Cynthia’s quiet footsteps leaving. He stretched out a finger, brushing the fabric of the top shirt.

It was his favorite muscle shirt, _Metallica_ spread across the chest. It was old—from the eighties. It had been his mother’s, stolen from an old boyfriend of hers. She had left it behind when she’d gone, and Billy had found it years later, tucked away in a box of his mother’s things. It had fit him, so he kept it. It was soft, and holy, and very worn. Billy picked it up and held it between his hands. Tears blurred his vision, and he blinked, trying to keep them from falling. Some days, he missed her so badly that it punched a hole through him, right through his diaphragm. Some days, he couldn’t breathe with the weight of it.

A sob broke through his chest, and he sat, clutching the shirt and curling over it. He pressed his forehead against the corner of the box and tried not to feel like dying, but he couldn’t help it. What was the point of living when not one but _two_ of his parents didn’t want him? What was the point of all of this? A few weeks ago, Billy would have gone to the sea, surfboard in hand, and surfed off the emotion, until he felt calm and serene and happy, if just for a little while. But that option wasn’t open to him anymore. He had run past the beach on his way to the garage and had risked a glance out to sea, and frozen. Not the comical kind, like you see in the movies, but the tripping and falling kind. Just hearing the waves washing against the shore had sent his heart into a frantic beat, and his breath tightened in his chest and his legs had gone weak. He had suffocated on the panic of remembering, of the waves rising up in front of his eyes, of the feeling of the pressure on his head, on the phantom grip of that thing dragging him down, down, down.

He had choked on his own throat and blacked out, for a minute or two.

Another sob wracked his chest and he pressed tighter, trying to block out the feeling of such utter fucking isolation.

He cried for a few more minutes and then got up, wiping his eyes and sniffling a little bit. He rifled through the first box to see what else Max had saved. She’d managed to get a lot of his favorite clothes, for which Billy was immeasurably grateful. Jeans, a few more muscle and t-shirts, a hoodie and his jean jacket. At the bottom sat his bomber, beat up and folded carefully. Billy grinned, pulling it out.

He still wore the outfit that he’d stolen off a guard in the middle of his escape, and it was, frankly, ill-fitting and uncomfortable. And it looked _terrible,_ too. He pulled on jeans, the Metallica shirt, and his bomber jacket over it. The next box held his motorcycle boots (which he happily put on), a pair of black chucks, and his Nike running shoes. Socks, and underwear, too. The third box held the real treasures, though. His car keys, his balisong and switchblade, a zippo, and the picture of his mom. When he was fourteen, Billy had seen a character on a TV show use a balisong, and became obsessed. He had scoured stores and shops until he’d found one, and then talked the store owner into selling it to him under the table. It had been a sort of survival mechanism, being able to talk his way out of situations, developed and fine-tuned to Neil, but it worked just as well on other adults. Billy had cut his hands up good learning to use it, but he didn’t much care.

The switchblade he’d lifted off an oblivious tourist on the pier.

He tucked those away in various pockets on his person and then dived back in. There were more clothes, and then that was pretty much it.

He clomped out of his room to the kitchen, where Cynthia was sitting with her hands wrapped around a cup of coffee.

“You got guns?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Tell me why you need them.”

Billy licked his bottom lip. “Something tried to drown me, and then this shady government organization decided to fake my death and keep me in a small room for three weeks.”

Cynthia nodded and got up, walking downstairs. Billy followed her to the office of her shop, where she crouched in front of a safe in the corner. She opened it, swinging the door wide to reveal a small spread of firearms.

“Take what you need, boy.”

Billy knelt down and picked up a .22 revolver. It was black and small and perfect for a concealed carry. Billy flicked out the cylinder and checked to make sure it wasn’t loaded. He grabbed a box of ammo and set them aside and went back for a handgun and a shotgun.

Neil had taught Billy how to shoot when he was fifteen, right after he’d pressed the barrel of a gun to his head and told him that if he ever caught Billy with a boy again, he’d shoot him.

Cynthia watched to the side; dark eyes concerned. Billy made no move to reassure her. The situation was exactly as he had explained it; there was nothing he could tell her to make her feel better, and he wasn’t going to lie. He loaded the guns right there and then asked, “Can I keep the ammo?”

Cynthia raised an eyebrow and asked, “Will you need it?”

Billy clenched his jaw. “Yeah.”

“Then take all you need.”

Then she turned and went out of the office. Billy closed the safe, spinning the dial to lock it, and followed her.

Back upstairs, he found her rummaging in her closet for something. Billy frowned, about to ask, when she pulled back with something in her hands. She thrust it at him. It was a duffle bag, sort of small, but sturdy looking.

He took that too and went back to the room, where he packed as many of his things in it while still fitting the guns. He picked it up, thinking, _this is my whole life, now. All in this one bag._

He left the room.

In the living room, Cynthia was waiting for him. “Billy,” she said. “Sit down.”

And because she was more of a mother figure to him than anyone had been to him since he was eleven years old, he sat.

She stared at his face for a long moment. “What are you going to do, Billy?”

He looked away, finding it too hard to meet her heavy gaze. “I’m going to find my sister. I’m going to make sure what happened to me doesn’t happen to her.”

Billy could tell that she wanted to ask; that she was wondering why he would be worried that it would happen to Max when she was miles and counties and states away from the ocean, but she knew better. Cynthia knew Billy, knew him in ways that were much different from anyone else. He hadn’t let himself be vulnerable around her, not truly, because being vulnerable meant being weak, and he couldn’t afford that—but he had let himself relax in a way that he didn’t get a chance to around anyone else. And for as much trouble as he liked to cause, he had never asked for _guns._

Cynthia bit the inside of her lip and looked down at her hands, calloused and stained with grease. The skin of her knuckles nearest to her fingertips was split, healed over and split again, constantly covered in superglue so that they wouldn’t bleed everywhere. Billy’s mom’s hands had been just like them, worn from hours and hours of gripping and pushing and placing. But they’d always been so soft, when they touched him.

“I never understood it,” Cynthia whispered, still looking at her hands.

Billy frowned, shifted, about to ask when she continued, “How she could have left you like that. You were such a sweet boy, the first time I saw you. The perfect little wrench monkey.”

Billy remembered the first time he had met Cynthia. They had only been in California for two weeks, and his mother had come to the shop to ask for a job. Cynthia had been under a car, and for a moment, Billy thought his mother had cloned and aged ten years. She had stuck a hand out, groping for a wrench, muttering, “where the fuck is that thing, I swear it wanders off—” and Billy had taken the few steps forward and pushed it into her hand.

Cynthia looked up at him, meeting his eyes. She looked on the verge of crying again, “I had always wanted a little brat to run around the shop. And you were so smart, and I just thought that this was fate. If I couldn’t have my own, then I could have you.” The tears spilled over and slipped down her cheeks and she sniffled and wiped them away. “And then she left and I never _understood_ it. I would’ve never left my own, like that.”

Billy wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Cynthia, by nature, was not sentimental. This was not a person who he knew; who he knew how to comfort. Frankly, Billy wasn’t in the business of comforting much at all.

“The point of this, Billy, is to tell you that it’s not your fault. Your father is a mean bastard who deserves to rot in hell, and your mother couldn’t take it. Even if she didn’t want you, I did. I wouldn’t have traded these years for anything.”

Billy opened his mouth to deflect, to say something insulting or crude or mean but Cynthia fixed him with that stare and he shrunk. “You are worth it, Billy Hargrove. Never let him take that away from you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that any responsible adult would never, _ever_ give a barely-legal teenager several guns with ammunition and the blanket permission to use them, especially if said guns were registered under their name. But! This is Stranger Things, which has always been a little free with their guns, and Billy needs something to defend himself with. But please, PLEASE, never think that what Cynthia did was good or responsible or anything like what you should do if you're confronted with a previously-dead teenager who is in danger from suspicious government organizations in real life.


	11. All My Friends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for discussions/references to abuse and a _little_ bit of suicidal ideation. It's less meant to be active and more meant to be one of those wild, irrational thoughts that seem like a good idea in the middle of grief.  
The chapter title is from the song of the same name by Palaye Royale.  
Come find me on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/dashboard/blog/withoutmonsters)

Max wondered what she was doing here. “Here” referred to the Byers house, tucked away on a small plot of land 10 minutes out of town. The yard was scruffy, the impromptu driveway really just a run of weeds. It struck Max as the kind of thing that had been done at first because it was convenient, but then it had become habit and no one had bothered to stop.

Max’s homework had been interrupted when her phone had started buzzing frantically. It had been Lucas, and when she’d answered, he’d said, “Max! Thank god I caught you. Listen, there’s been a demodog attack. Steve is driving to pick you up and take you to the Byers house. You should wait about a block down from your house for him.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Max said, “Hold the fucking phone, stalker. What do you mean, there’s been another attack?”

Lucas explained about the patrols.

“So you guys were _looking_ for them?”

“Well, yeah,” he said. “We gotta make sure that they don’t cause trouble.”

Max had made several vague noises in her throat, stunned that anyone would be willing to go out and fight those things on purpose.

“Listen,” Lucas said. “You _have_ to sneak out, Max. We are calling an emergency meeting. You need to be there for it, since you know, now.”

“Okay,” Max had said, grabbing a jacket, pulling on shoes, and shoving up the sash. She dropped off onto the small eave right below her window, then onto the ground below.

Steve screeched to a stop five minutes after Lucas’s call, Dustin already in the front seat. Max had clambered in and Steve had gunned it, throwing Max around. She had made a furious noise and buckled herself in.

Dustin eyed her. “So, why are we picking you up?”

Max frowned. “Because I need a ride.”

“Yeah, I know, but _why?”_

Max had been confused at his question, but Steve had not. “Because she got attacked by a demodog, yesterday.”

“Son of a bitch!” Dustin turned in his seat. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

Max shrugged. “I ditched lunch.” The rest of the ride had been silent, as if Dustin could sense her reluctance for talking about it.

The Byers house was uncomfortably full, Max thought, as she followed Steve and Dustin through the doorway. There were a lot of people there, some she didn’t recognize: a small woman with chestnut hair and dark, piercing eyes; a boy with bags under his eyes and a near-bowl cut; a girl, her hair pulled back into a ponytail and a worried pinch between her face; and another girl, this one lounging on a slightly worn couch, who lit up when she saw Steve and cried, “Dingus!” 

The people Max did recognize were: El, Mike, Will, Lucas, Dustin, and Hopper.

Mike, standing by the girl with the ponytail and El, fixed his eyes on Max and said, “What are _you_ doing here?”

Max opened her mouth to defend herself, but Steve said, “Mike, chill.”

Mike opened his mouth to argue, but the girl with the ponytail said, _“Mike.”_ He turned to look at her, obviously annoyed that she was also defending Max, but she just said, “No, I know that tone, Mike. You don’t like newcomers except El, we get it. But Max has as much of a right to be here as anyone else, so you don’t get to be rude about it.”

Max felt strange being defended by someone whose name she didn’t even know.

Lucas came up to her. “Hey,” he said. “You alright? You guys get here okay?”

Max nodded, “Yeah. No problems.”

“Alright,” Hopper’s voice cut through all conversations.

Before he continued, Mike interrupted, “Why are we here?”

“Mike,” El said, taking his hand.

“What?” He said. “It’s a legitimate question!”

“You’re being rude, kid, and you know it,” Hopper said.

Mike made a protesting noise but the girl he’d been arguing with cut him off. “Steve and I found something while patrolling.”

Everyone quieted, focusing on her.

“And what’s that, Nancy?” the woman asked.

“A rip,” Steve said.

“A rip?” echoed Dustin.

Steve nodded. “Yeah, like those smaller portals that the Demogorgon came through. They open sort of randomly, just around.”

“Yeah, that’s how it took me,” Will said.

“Son of a bitch,” Dustin said.

“Language,” came the retort from the adults.

“They came out of the woods, attacked us, and headed back into the woods. When we followed them, I caught the last one going through the portal before it closed up,” Nancy said, moving a little closer to the center of the room. “I don’t think these portals are permanent. They’re just…rips, like Steve said.”

“Where was this?” Hopper asked.

“About 5 minutes from Steve’s house, just outside of Loch Nora.”

“Did you mark where the portal was?”

Nancy nodded.

Hopper took a deep breath in and nodded. “Okay, so that’s where the demodogs are coming from. But _how?_ El closed the gate; that was supposed to have cut off any and all footholds the Mindflayer had in this world. They shouldn’t be here at all.”

“Well,” Steve said, “Nancy and I sort of came up with a theory for that, too.”

Everyone looked at him, eyes expectant, and Steve kind of shrunk. Max wondered why; from everything her brother had said about Steve Harrington, he was the popular type: charming, good at sports, handsome, the only type who had fun at ragers. It didn’t make much sense for Steve to get self-conscious _now,_ in front of people who were, arguably, supposed to be his closest friends.

He cleared his throat, “Well, the Mindflayer was able to open up those rips because there was a larger, more permanent gate open elsewhere that allowed him to get through in the first place. So it follows that, if these rips are still opening up, then that means that there’s _also_ a permanent gate open somewhere, too.”

Mike frowned. “But El closed the gate.”

Steve shrugged. “I’m not saying it’s El’s gate that’s open, just _a_ gate.”

“Wait, wait. So, you think that there are other people who have El’s powers?” Hop asked, looking a little belligerent.

Steve shrugged. “Well, we know there are. El met up with Kali in Chicago. I’m just saying that it’s not much of a leap to think that there might be more _successful_ experiments to reach the Upside Down.”

Everyone stared at Steve. He shifted his weight to one foot, then the other, raising a hand and then dropping it and then putting it on one hip. He popped that hip out.

El piped up. “I think he’s right.”

Hopper looked at his daughter. “You know something?”

El shook her head. “No. I knew Kali from when I was little, but eventually, the lab got rid of all their failed children.”

A chill crept up Max’s spine at her matter-of-fact tone. Lucas and Steve had filled her in on El’s backstory with everything else, but that didn’t mean that she could _accept_ it, like everyone else seemed to be doing.

El continued, “Some escaped, like Kali. I don’t know what happened to the ones who didn’t.”

The group was quiet for a minute; Max could feel the fury in the air at El’s mistreatment. Max had to admit, if one of those lab agents showed up right that second, she would gladly take Steve’s bat to their face.

El, seeming not to know what to do in the silence of the room, said, “Maybe one of the other children was successful.”

Hopper near-collapsed onto a couch, scrubbing his face with his hands.

Nancy spoke, “I mean, El is right. She _was_ number eleven. What if there’s someone else out there who accidentally opened a portal, and doesn’t know how to close it?”

“Well, right now, that’s not our biggest problem.” The boy with the bags under his eyes spoke up.

“Of course, it is, Jonathan,” Nancy snapped.

_So that’s the maker of the nail-bat,_ Max thought, studying him. He didn’t look particularly fucked up _or_ desperate. Right then, he just looked tired. Tired and drained and worried, like the woman with the chestnut hair. Now that Max thought about it, she realized they sort of looked alike. Not in looks, but in the way they held themselves; the way they stayed calm while Max felt like she was going to start screaming and not stop for days.

Jonathan looked Nancy in the eyes. “No, it’s not. We can debate all night whether or not one of El’s lab-siblings opened a portal or not, but at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is that a gate _is_ open, and we need to close it. So, how do we find it?”

“El can look for it,” Mike piped up.

“That’s a bad idea,” Dustin said. “Last time El ‘looked’ for something from the Upside Down, she opened up a gate.”

El shrunk back a little bit.

“It’s not her fault!” Mike protested, glaring viciously at Dustin. “Brenner made her do it!”

“I’m not saying it’s her fault, Mike,” Dustin snapped. “I’m just saying what happened.”

“Okay, okay!” Hopper said. “No looking for now. We’ll continue on patrols until we work out a more permanent plan. I will do some investigation into the MKULtra project and see what I can find out about it.”

“That’s all?” Mike demanded. “We just learned that the Mindflayer could have another gate open and that’s all you want to do? Some _research?”_

“Why don’t we help with the research?” Dustin exclaimed, excited.

Hopper leveled him a look. “No, no help with the research.”

Dustin gaped. “What? You’re turning down the help of the people who spent the most time at the library last summer than anyone else in Hawkins? Will can map the whole of the bottom floor! I know exactly where the non-fictional government-secret conspiracy books are. We can help!”

“I don’t have to go to the library,” Hopper said. “I have, and I know this will be a shock to hear, Dustin, but it’s this little thing called the internet.”

Dustin scoffed. “You’re relying on the internet over the use of good, old fashioned books? You shouldn’t believe everything that you read online, you know.”

Hopper shot him a scornful look. “I think I can tell the difference, thanks.”

Dustin made a noise, a bit like an angry kitten, Max thought, and threw up his hands. Lucas was glaring at Hopper too, Max realized, and so was—a little shockingly—Will. Mike seemed to have a permanent glare on his face when not talking to El, so for all Max knew, he could be angry about the leaves falling outside, but the rest of the party looked pretty damn angry at being sidelined.

Max interrupted the growing tension in the room. “What’s Project MKUltra?”

Everyone turned startled eyes on her, as if they had forgotten she was there. Steve opened his mouth. “It’s a project that was conducted by the US government from the 50’s to the 70’s. They often used unwilling patients; gave them psychedelic drugs and stuff like that. A lot of the patients suffered things like mental and sexual abuse, sleep and sensory deprivation, isolation, and other forms of torture. It was bad news.”

“The project was officially shut down in 1973, but certain national labs, like the one in Hawkins, were given special permission to continue. It branched out into conducting experiments on the children of the test subjects.” Hopper continued Steve’s monologue.

“That’s what happened to El?” Max asked, the creeping realization of where that nickname came from butting into the back of her mind.

Hopper nodded, but it was a subdued movement. The quite in the room was deafening.

* * *

The car was quiet, on the drive home. Max hadn’t even been gone for an hour. It was dark, the radio off, Steve’s face shadowed next to Max. Max studied him, wondering how it had been just the day before when Steve had looked so carefree and goofy. Now he looked tired, in that dead-weight way. His thumb tapped on the steering wheel.

Max stared at the dash in front of her and remembered the milkshakes. Billy had _loved_ milkshakes—in fact, he’d had quite the sweet tooth, something he had complained about because it was hard for him to resist sweet food when Neil had him on an especially strict diet for the sake of “sports.” Max had always thought that Neil’s diets for Billy were always more about controlling him than keeping him healthy.

“Is that diner still open?” The question was impulsive, something she hadn’t even known she had wanted to ask until it was out.

Steve looked at her, startled. “What?”

“The diner,” Max repeated. “You once promised me that if I was ever in Hawkins, you’d take me to get malts.”

Steve shuddered, closing his eyes as tears welled up and spilled out. The car rolled to a stop on the curb as Steve bent over, resting his head on the steering wheel, and began to cry. It was the silent kind of crying, the one where you made no noise because your body was so focused on making tears. Max briefly worried that he would hit the horn, but then a sob wrenched out of him and Max’s attention all went to him.

All her life, Steve had been a phantom presence following Billy around. He was goofy and funny and cheered Max up when Billy was being a dick (provided Max was in the same room during the call). They talked so much—phone calls and skype calls and texting and DMing and emails and even, on one memorable occasion, letters. They were the relationship that Max had strove toward all her teenage life because they were _close._ Close in the way Max thought twins might be, having known each other for so long that most of the time, they didn’t even need to talk (not that there was much sibling-like about their bond). They knew dirty little secrets about one another that no one else would care about but they remembered because they were _them,_ close and loving and full of affectionate belligerent speech. They were both a little assholish, and they both could be dicks to each other, but at the end of the day, it didn’t matter because they loved each other.

All of Max’s memories of Billy were tinged, just a little bit, with Steve.

Now, a crucial half of their duo was missing, an omitted variable to the equation, and Max didn’t know how to solve it anymore. She couldn’t make y equal x if x was undefined. If Billy were there, he’d know how to comfort Steve. Know just the right combination of jerkwad and kind to play to make Steve laugh. But Max was not her brother, and never had she so wished more that it had been her that had drowned and Billy the one left behind.

Steve raised his head, sniffling, and said. “Sorry. I totally forgot about that.”

Max bit her lip. “I should be the one apologizing. For both this and yesterday. I didn’t break the news very well.”

Steve shook his head. “No, I’m glad you told me. It’s not like Neil or Susan even knew about me to tell me. What’s more likely is that I would have googled it in another week or two and gone out of my mind after reading an article about it. I’m glad I found out from you.”

Max nodded, silent with unspoken words.

Steve said hollowly, “Yeah, it’s still open. I just never imagined I’d be going without Billy. When I made that offer, I thought that he’d drag you out here when you were old enough to ditch your parents and crash at my place. I thought that it’d be the summer, and Billy would be complaining about the lack of surfing and I’d feed his sweet tooth any chance I got. I didn’t think it’d be like _this.”_

“Yeah,” Max said. “And you would have to make extra room for his weights because the dumbass would never have gone anywhere without them, and he’d force you to move your car out of the garage so he could park the Camaro in it. And I’d have to put up with you two wrestling and touching _all the time_ and Billy would ask me if I couldn’t handle a little friendly ‘no homo’ because he always liked to tease straight guys like that and he would double it for you and…” Max trailed off, her throat closing around the possibilities that would never come to pass now.

“And I’d buy the exact brand of orange juice he liked, even if I had to drive all the way to Indianapolis to get it, and go to bars with him to be his wingman despite the fact that Billy is far too young. You and me could make fun of him every time he put his hair into that stupid man bun and I could watch the freckles forming on his face every day when he went to swim in the pool because, let’s be honest, there is no way I would be able to keep him out of it. And as for the wrestling,” Steve looked at her, a smile curling his lips, “I would have tickled him until he couldn’t breathe if he tried to ‘no homo’ me. I’m not straight, I’m bisexual. I came out to him over a phone call at 2 am in freshman year when I realized I had a crush on Tommy H. He laughed at me when I told him because he said it was so obvious, but helped me through it. Gave me some resources to contact.” Something had come into his voice—a heartfelt aching that cut Max to the quick. He tilted his head back, resting it on the head-rest, studying the ceiling as if it had all the answers. “Y’know, my mom used to call him a porpoise because he loved the water so much.”

Max laughed wetly. “A _porpoise?_ And how big of a fit did he throw when he heard that one?”

Steve shrugged. “He was like, six, so maybe not that big.”

Max was quiet for a moment. “What was he like? I mean…” Max made a vague gesture with her hands. “I always knew him as…”

“A dickwad?” Steve licked his lips. “You didn’t deserve it, you know.”

Max looked at him sharply. Steve watched her, eyes steady. “I know that he could be a real jackass sometimes. But I want you to know that whatever Neil was doing to him, you didn’t deserve it.”

Max blinked, trying not to cry. “It’s fine. Neil was such a piece of shit to him. I always put up with it because like, whatever helped, y’know? Neil always liked me better.”

“That doesn’t change anything, Max. You _didn’t deserve it._ Neither of you did, but just because Billy took the brunt of it doesn’t mean that you had to keep your mouth shut and be some sort of punching bag for him. Look, I loved Billy. So much. Sometimes it felt like he was the only thing that mattered in my life. But Max, he was a dick, and if he was here, I’d make him apologize to you for it. You didn’t deserve it, no matter what else was happening.”

“Thanks,” she said, strangled, not knowing how else to respond. It was strange to hear it, especially from Steve. He was always on Billy’s side—no matter what was happening, Steve supported _Billy,_ first and foremost. And Max had been making excuses for Billy for as long as she had lived with him because Neil _was_ a piece of shit. She could understand why Billy wanted all the power in their relationship, because he had so little anywhere else in his life. But it soothed something in her, to hear Steve say that. It acknowledged that Billy had been in a horrible situation and that she was too; that Billy deserved better but still made mistakes; that no matter what Neil had done to him was not an excuse for his own shitty behavior.

“He was happy,” Steve said, after a moment of silence. It was, ostensibly, the most general thing he could have told Max, but for Billy, that was rare. “He loved his mother’s shop; he was always there. Sometimes, she’d let us sit in the front seat of the car and pretend we were in an action movie. Y’know, like, _hitty Chitty Bang Bang,_ or something.”

Max made a face. _“Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?_ What’s that?”

Steve laughed. “It’s an old ‘60s movie. It’s about a magical car.”

Max choked.

Steve grinned at her. “My dad loved it. He made us watch it one night.”

“Yeah?”

Steve nodded. “Yeah. Billy always had a really big imagination, but it was always put towards things like alterations his mother could make to a car to improve it. By the time they moved, he was practically as good a mechanic as his mom. Except he was real skinny,” Steve pinched his fingers together about an inch apart. “Super scrawny. Walkin’ around like a damn stick, I tell you.”

Max giggled. “Yeah, I remember that. He was kinda short, too.”

“Oh, yeah. I always used to tease him about it. I was a big kid, when I was young. I didn’t start getting really into sports until middle school, so I had a bit of extra weight. He would always poke me and then I would lay on him, and no matter what he tried, he couldn’t get me off.” Steve’s eyes softened. “Then he moved to California and his dad started him on the diets and I started sports and we grew. We weren’t soft, anymore.”

Max breathed in and out. “I remember the first time I saw him. He was still scrawny but bulking up. I think it was ‘cause of Neil. Like, he used to push Billy around and stuff. Make cracks about what a weakling he was. Then he got Billy a set of weights and that’s all Billy did for a while. I used to think it was so _boring._ Like, he’d just stand in the living room for hours and hours, lifting weights and watching TV and blasting music. It felt like he took over the whole house when he did that. But Neil started clapping him on the back and stuff. Praising him, calling him a ‘real man.’”

Steve looked over at Max. She could barely see him in the dim light, but she didn’t really want to. It almost felt like he would break, if he let her see his grief in the daylight. “I remember that. He ditched a call or two and I was worried. He always was like, ‘sorry, Harrington, I was working out.’ It bugged the shit out of me, but for a little while, he seemed happier.”

Max looked at her hands and they sat for a while. The car still rumbled under them, the heater blowing gentle warm air over their faces. She turned towards the window and looked out, studying the night. For a little while, Max had forgotten about their crazy lives; about the demodogs and the mysterious gate and the fact that something had tried to eat her, just yesterday. But looking into the darkness had reminded her and she went tense. She hated how windows had transformed in such a short time. Two days ago, looking out the window was a small escape from her life. Two days ago, a window was a promise of skating and fresh air and sun. Now, any promise the window held was some sort of death-promise, forcing Max to search the outside for errant demons in the night.

Steve sighed, running his hands through his hair. “I should get you home before your parents notice you’re gone.”

Max nodded. Steve drove in silence, but it was different from how it had been before. Their conversation had loosened something in Max’s chest. She liked hearing about her brother from someone else. So little people had loved him like she had, but Steve was one of them. Susan and Billy had always had a tumultuous relationship: Billy had insisted, vehemently, that Susan was not his mother and Susan had sneered at the son of a mother who couldn’t even stick around to raise her own kid. It had created a lot of fights outside of Neil, more punishments for Billy, and, Max thought secretly, a rift between her and her mother.

The first week after Billy drowned, Max had been so fucked up that all her conversations with her mother had been screaming fights. Her friends only knew Billy as Max’s asshole older brother who gave them rides sometimes, so they hadn’t been good people for Max to turn to. Max hadn’t really known Billy’s friends because he had been intensely private. Max hadn’t even thought of Steve, but she wished she had. She had a feeling that he would have sat on the phone for hours and cried with her.

Steve pulled up to her house. Max startled, looking at him, then her house.

In answer to her unspoken question, he said, “There are demodogs out tonight. One already attacked you; it’s not a good idea to make you walk alone in the dark. I don’t know what I was thinking, earlier.”

Max slumped a little bit. “You were thinking that my parents can’t see headlights out front and then catch me sneaking out.”

Steve nodded, but all he said was, “Get in safe, Max.”

She bit her lip. “Hey, can we do this again, sometime? Just—trade stories about Billy? I feel like no one knew him like you and I did and there really hasn’t been anyone I can talk to about it and…” She trailed off at his expression. It was slightly baffled, like he hadn’t even thought of it.

Max shook her head, “Never mind—”

“No!” Steve said hurriedly. “No, I want to. That would be good.”

She cast him a small smile and opened the door. “Great. Well, see you tomorrow, I guess.” He nodded as she shut the car door. She crept around the side of the house, heart pounding as she did. She hadn’t really been thinking that there was a demodog in her backyard, but now that Steve had brought it up, she was on high-alert.

Max strained her ears to listen for soft claw-falls in the grass or echoing chittering. But there was nothing, not even crickets out. She quietly shuddered, out of fear or relief, she didn’t know, and snuck to her window. It was much harder climbing _in_ than climbing out, but she managed, with some grunting and a few choice swear words, to scramble in and land face-first on the bed. She popped up, swiping hair out of her face, and quickly closed her window, making sure to lock it. Max huffed out a breath and then froze, listening for the telltale footfalls that would mean that Neil Hargrove had heard his stepdaughter sneak back in and was on the warpath.

Nothing but the slight creaking of an old house answered her ears. Max closed her eyes, a much greater, visceral relief spreading through her chest, pricking her eyes. She was too keyed up for this, she thought, trying not to think about all those times that Billy had snuck back in at night. Max scrubbed at her eyes and took off her jacket, moving around her room to replace her shoes in their rightful place and crawl into bed. She was tempted to just go to sleep with her clothes on, but knew she would hate herself for it in the morning. With a quiet, exhausted groan, she dragged her jeans off and then her shirt, groping around with one hand in the dark to find her sleep shirt. Finally, pajamas on and curtains closed, she snuggled under her blankets, shutting her eyes and trying not to think about paring-knife claws scraping at her window.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're just gonna say that Steve told Nancy about Max's adventures with the demodog.  
Also! The information I used about MKUltra is based in truth, but then I elaborated A LOT, so don't take anything here as gospel. MKUltra _was_ a CIA program conducted in the fifties, and I put all the information that I found on [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra) in Steve's monologue. Also, for clarification about Max's comment about them being like twins, I meant that in the sense that they had known each other long enough that they don't need a lot of coherent verbal communication, _not_ that they were incestuous in any way.  
Also, I have no justification as to why Hopper wouldn't let them help with research other than that I really didn't feel like writing the actual research scene.


	12. Who Art In Hell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for a scene of explicit abuse and the f-slur.   
[my tumblr](https://withoutmonsters.tumblr.com/)

The sun hung high in the sky by the time Billy was hungry enough to stop for food. Yesterday, he’d driven until midnight, when he’d finally stopped for some much-needed rest. He’d wanted to keep driving, to pack in a few more miles, but the voice had forced him to find a motel. 

_You’re too tired,_ it had insisted. _You’ll crash._

Billy’s route was as direct as he could make it, but it wasn’t as simple as cutting across the interior of the country to get to Indiana. First, he had to go north on Route 101 to catch I-10 across Arizona and New Mexico. Then he turned north again on I-25 all the way until Albuquerque, where he headed east on I-40 until it branched off onto I-70 in Oklahoma, which was then a straight shot through Missouri and Illinois.

Albuquerque was a sparse sprawl at the base of the Sandia Mountains. The buildings were boxy and low and the sky was endless blue and Billy felt centered, for just a little while. He liked the desert—had spent hours of time hiking it and exploring it and making a home in it.

California had real sun, the kind of sun that beat down and coated your skin and warmed your whole body until it was lax and comfortable and smooth. The same sun hung over New Mexico, high in the sky and warm even on winter days. Billy had spent yesterday driving through Arizona, with the saguaro cacti standing watch over their empty land, birds shrieking overhead. Billy hadn’t really liked Arizona, for the sole reason that he was antsy, and had spent most of the drive pissy and tired and worked up. But he’d gotten a full night’s rest in a small motel in Las Cruces and had awoken refreshed and, dare he say it, optimistic.

It was, to be blunt, a very foreign feeling. Billy hadn’t felt this way since he was ten years old and his mother was telling him they were moving to California so that they could be closer to his dad, who was stationed on a naval base there. She’d talked like it was paradise, and Billy hadn’t seen his dad except for a few visits here and there and some video calls. He had been excited to finally live close to his father, the man his mother was always talking about. But even that had been dampened by the prospect of leaving Steve. It was funny. You would think that Hawkins had been a paradise to Billy, a place with his mother, his best friend, and no father. But Billy had loved the ocean too much to truly _regret_ moving, and had dreamed, often, of some miracle being worked so that Steve was magically teleported cross country and his father, somehow, exchanged for his mother. Now, _that_ would have been paradise.

He exited the freeway, grumbling about shit drivers, and pulled onto a smaller street. It was a shame that Billy wasn’t in Albuquerque a little earlier, he thought, as he parked at a Burger King and went in. A friend back in San Diego had been from Albuquerque; had told Billy stories about their sunsets, about the mountains flushing a bright quartz-pink for a fleeting five minutes as the sun bid goodbye to the day.

“Yeah,” he would tell Billy, in between kisses, “the Sandias are made up of some kinda quartz. When the sun rays hit them just right, they turn this like, bright pink. It’s the prettiest thing in the world, dude.”

He and Billy would dream of a day when they could take the Camaro and do a road trip. Secretly, in Billy’s mind, he would dream that they were driving to Indiana to see Steve, and would stop in Albuquerque for a day or two while Domingo showed him his old stomping grounds.

“I’d take you up to the crest,” Domingo would say, a little drunkenly. “On the tram. You can see forever, up there. The whole city, spread out like veins beneath us. We could hike the crest and go up to Kiwanis hut. We could walk the Bosque and take the dogs to the river. I could take you for some real New Mexican food, get you a jar of Hatch green chile.” Domingo’s eyes always lit up when talking about the food—it was, reportedly, different from just plain Mexican food, and every time Billy had suggested finding something like it in San Diego, Domingo would snort and say, a little offended, “There’s nothing like it in _San Diego._ That shit’s different, man. No good chile at all.” New Mexicans were very proud of their chile, Billy had learned.

Now, Billy was in Albuquerque, but he had never dreamed about the circumstances. That he was legally dead, running from some shady government lab, and driving hell-bent-for-leather in a bid to get to Indiana before something bad happened. If someone had told that to the Billy of six months ago, he would have laughed and then socked them. The Burger King was plastic and bright and Billy was already sick of fast food. It wasn’t the kind of food he normally ate, in the slightest. Sure, he could go for a good burger every once in a while, but that was at a local burger joint that made fries in a truffle-and-cracked-black-pepper coating and didn’t card you if you bought microbrew.

Billy ordered a burger, fries, and a shake, and waited for the people behind the counter to bag it up so he could eat in on the road. He didn’t have time to eat his lunch (it was a late lunch, to be honest, but he hadn’t wanted the continental breakfast at the motel, so he hadn’t eaten) somewhere. He needed all the time he could get, and that included a thirty-minute interlude to scarf a burger and a chocolate milkshake.

Steve always liked dipping his fries into his shake, a habit that Billy had adopted, and then later shown to Max, who had sneered at it for a solid six months before taking quite the shine to it. Billy had called Steve right there in the restaurant to gloat with him, grinning and laughing at Max, who was wrinkling her nose but still munching. Steve had laughed long and hard when Billy had told him, teasing Max through the speaker phone and promising her that if she ever came to Hawkins, Steve would take her to the diner on the edge of town, the one that made the best malts in all of Indiana. Max had asked what a malt was and Steve had gasped, _how can you not know what a malt is??_ and Billy had proceeded to argue with him over which was better: malts or shakes.

Afternoons spent with Max had been rare, at the end. Both of them had been busy, running around with opposite friends and spending as much time out of the house as possible. Neil had been getting more erratic, graduating from slaps on the cheek and a few punches to full on beatings. Ironically, Neil had never been a very violent guy. Sure, he could end a fight when he felt like it. But Neil Hargrove believed in more insidious ways to teach his son a lesson when he wanted, so the physical abuse hadn’t ever gotten very intense.

Neil had never belted Billy, for instance. He had made a point to make sure that Billy was never admitted to the hospital, because he knew how to stay out of the radar of the police, but for some strange reason, he was invested beyond that in making sure his son had a body in good physical condition. Even though it had been his mother who had pushed Billy into surfing, it was Neil who supported him in all other sports: basketball, baseball, soccer. Billy played a sport year-around, lifted weights in his down time, and ran six days a week.

It wasn’t that Neil didn’t support his son: oh no, when he _did_ decide to be a good father, people would call him exemplary. He went to all his son’s games, cheering from the sidelines the loudest. He bought his son a set of very nice weights and taught him how to use them properly. He praised Billy on the good grades he got and, when he was smaller, helped Billy with his homework and school projects. He gave Billy money for gas and a good weekly allowance (when he was in a good mood). When Neil felt like it, he was good at being fatherly.

The problem, of course, was that sometimes, Neil _didn’t_ feel like being fatherly. For every smile and word of praise, there was a sneer and put down waiting in the wings. Neil’s standards were exacting, and left no room for mistakes. When Billy tripped up, Neil was there to hold him over the hot coals of humiliation and make sure that Billy felt every lick of heat. If Billy’s team lost a game, it was somehow personally Billy’s fault. If he was late because of traffic, Billy was the guy who had deliberately crashed the car three streets over that was clogging everything up. For everything that Billy did right, Neil had something that he had done wrong, and never failed to let him know. But nearing the end of their life in California, something had changed with Neil. Usually, he acted like Billy was a rebellious child who was being punished for his own good. Lately, though, Neil hadn’t even bothered to bring something up that Billy was supposed to be punished for. He would stop giving Billy money for gas, deliberately stranding him at home, then punishing him for being unable to take Max where she wanted to go. He would force strict diets on Billy because he was “looking pudgy” (he most definitely was _not_), or shred Billy’s homework with the excuse that it wasn’t good enough. On one occasion, he went into his room and shredded half of Billy’s clothes, videoing the whole time so he had a chronicle to post on his Facebook.

“Look at all this shit,” he’d sneered on camera, spreading out the more feminine articles of clothing that Billy had owned (none of them had truly been female clothing. But they were clothes that were any shade of pink, anything with ruffles or extra fabric, and even a coat that was cut to slim Billy down a bit. He didn’t dress in feminine clothes because he felt like a girl; no, he just liked looking good, and if that meant knowing his way around some makeup and buying shirts in a color that Neil insisted was shameful for real men, then, well, he didn’t regret it). He panned the camera to pick up Billy’s shocked and teary eyes, and slammed his head into the wall, one hand on his jaw. He held the camera close and slurred, “Look at this. _Look at it._ It’s shameful. I didn’t raise my son to be a fucking fag. Huh? Did I? _DID I!”_

“No, sir,” Billy whispered, earning him another sharp shove.

“I can’t hear you,” Neil hissed.

“No, sir,” Billy said louder.

“Say it! Say it all!”

“You didn’t raise me to be a faggot, sir.” Billy said, his voice going hollow and empty.

“That’s right,” Neil shoved off him and propped the camera up, going into the middle of the room and beginning to tear up the clothes.

Billy watched from where he was by the wall, trying not to cry. Crying always made everything worse.

Neil had posted the video on Facebook, and then made Billy read every comment on the video out loud (Neil’s friends were just as homophobic as he was, making the comment section a gold mine for Neil). Billy was a little surprised he didn’t film that, too.

Neil liked his camera, liked filming stuff, especially the humiliating parts. It was a habit that Billy despised more than anything else, mostly because it was useless to him. When Neil had first gotten the camera, Billy had had a spark of hope. _Maybe, just maybe,_ he thought, _if Neil films it all, I can go to the cops. Hard evidence._ But Neil was sneaky, using the camera to film the more innocuous encounters with his son. He’d never, ever filmed himself hitting Billy before. 

Billy remembered Cynthia’s words. _Your father is a mean bastard who deserves to rot in hell._ Bitterness flooded his mouth. 


	13. Graveyard Whistling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for an explicit panic attack and a flashback due to PTSD. Also some discussion referencing past child abuse, and some explicit gore regarding character death. Chapter title is from the song of the same name by Nothing But Thieves. Find me on tumblr @withoutmonsters, and as always, this chapter is unbetaed.

The sun beat down onto the pavement of the steps to Hawkins High. Max sat, feet spread, elbows resting on either knee. She stared at the line of shadow that the overhang created. The sidewalk ran through it, an anthill blooming up between the cracks. She watched the ants scurry back and forth, little workers unconcerned with bigger things.  
Class had been going semi-well. It was a drag that Max would have rather not bothered with, but dropping out of high school was so far out of the bounds of “optional” that she’d have to settle for cutting class. She didn’t really want to _leave_ the school, just…take a beat.

Back in Cali, Max got top grades, in part because of Billy. Susan had always been of the mindset of “just get it done, I don’t care what you have to do,” but would raise hell if Max was caught cheating. That had left Billy, who was (a little shockingly to people who didn’t know him all that well) very smart, taking as many AP classes as he could, to help her. He said he got bored in regular classes, which might’ve been true, but Max didn’t know why he piled all that school work on top of everything else he had to do. But somehow, he always got it done.

Max was considering just not doing her work. It would be a pleasing rebellion to her, considering that right now, high school was a waste of her time. She could be doing better things, like doing more research on the MKUltra thing or finding the gate. The faster they got those demodogs out of Hawkins, the better.

Behind her, the door opened and she tensed. It was probably a teacher coming to evict her from her seat. Max turned, glaring, a retort to whatever they decided to say on her tongue. Instead, she saw Lucas.

Max opened her mouth, shocked. “What are you doing out here?”

Lucas shrugged. “I saw you from my classroom window. Thought you might like some company.”

Max raised one shoulder half-heartedly.

“What’s wrong?” Lucas asked, taking a seat by her.

Max studied her hands: the pink beds of her nails, the ragged cuticles, the jagged nails that she hadn’t cut in weeks. They were, she found, good for scratching people when she wanted away from them. She turned her left hand over and pushed her right thumb into the palm.

Lucas was looking at her, waiting for an answer.

“Y’know,” Max said, knowing that she wasn’t really answering Lucas’s question, “Steve has been friends with my brother for 13 years.”

“You have a brother?” Lucas asked. “I didn’t know.”

“That’s ‘cause he’s dead.”

Lucas looked at her, eyes wide like that hadn’t been anything like he was expecting. He floundered a little bit. “I—I’m sorry, I didn’t know, I thought—”

“It’s fine, stalker.” Max looked at him, taking in his open mouth. His eyes were, strangely enough, sympathetic.

“It’s not fine, Max,” Lucas said.

Max’s mouth twisted, and she looked back down at her hands. Her thumbnail was digging into her palm, creating a small dent in the skin. “You’re right, it’s not. Nothing about it is _fine._ I’m _here,_ stuck at a fucking high school, instead of surfing, like he’d want me to be doing.”

Lucas shifted. “He surfed?”

She nodded. “He was really good, too. He was the one who taught me.”

“What was he like?” Lucas sounded genuine, like he really wanted to know, instead of just asking for the sake of sounding like he was giving his condolences.

“He was a dick,” Max said, with a faint laugh. She twisted her fingers, her thumb dragging across her palm, trying to feel some friction. Something had lodged itself underneath her diaphragm, making it hard to breath. They sat there a moment.

“He was my brother,” she amended softly. “We fought like cats and dogs. I always made a point to drink his fancy fucking orange juice and he’d always take out my loads of laundry early from the dryer so my clothes were always wrinkled and a little damp. He acted so cocky ‘cause he had a classic Camaro and I would always put my feet on the dash, which drove him crazy. His favorite nickname for me was ‘shitbird,’ ‘cause it always bugged me so much.” Tears stung Max’s eyes. What she would give for him to call her that one more time. “But I loved him. He was the typical protective-older brother type, but would always listen to me after I got it through his thick head that I didn’t need him to protect me. He drove me anywhere I wanted, even if it was late at night, or he had to do something. He helped me with my homework and teased me until I felt better, fuck everything else. He—he—” Max broke off when her throat closed up around the tears. Lucas made a noise in the back of his throat and scooted closer, wrapping his arms around her and bringing her head to his shoulder.

She buried her face in his neck, smelling AXE body spray and sweat, fighting the hard sobs wracking her chest. She could never predict when the grief was going to overwhelm her. Sometimes it almost felt okay, and she could remember Billy with something like fondness. Other times, it felt like the earth was rising up and swallowing her whole.

Max clutched at his shirt, twisting it as she tried to get closer. Choking shudders ran through her, jerking her torso and cutting her breath in uneven gasps. Lucas made soft noises in her ear, slowly stroking her hair, letting her cry herself out.

He was kind of good at being comforting, Max thought, as her tears slowly calmed. He wasn’t awkward like other people had been when Max had cried to them. He didn’t say dumb phrases like, “it’s going to be okay,” or anything like that. He just held her and petted her, waiting for her to stop. It felt good.

Eventually, Max pulled away from Lucas and wiped her eyes. She sniffled, “Sorry about your shirt.”

Lucas looked down, where the collar of his shirt was wet with Max’s tears. “Eh,” he shrugged. “Worth it, if it means comforting a pretty girl.”

She gave a sudden wet laugh, startled and pleased that he had been able to make her. That one laugh turned into two, and then she was doubling over, giggling and shaking with her mirth. Lucas looked on for a moment, a little bewildered, before he, too, joined in. They sat on the steps of Hawkins High, Max and Lucas, loudly guffawing in the face of so much grief, and Max felt a million times better.

“Hey!” A teacher stood halfway out their door. “What do you two think you’re doing?”

“Oh no,” Lucas whispered.

Max laughed some more.

* * *

The bell rang and Max tried to slip out the door in front of the rush. The hall filled quickly with swarming bodies, chattering and talking and bumping around. Max shouldered her way to her locker, which she opened with nimble fingers. She dropped her textbook for Indiana State History and her binder and grabbed a notebook, which she quickly stuffed into her backpack.

Max slammed her locker and then walked to the lunchroom, bouncing on her toes. When she got to the cafeteria, she scanned it quickly before spotting Lucas talking to Dustin at their table. She noticed his collar was still a little wet.

When the teacher had caught them, he was going to send them to detention, but Max had unashamedly pulled the ‘dead relative’ card. Billy would have been too prideful; he would’ve said he was out there smoking (which he would have been doing anyway) or waiting for a girl to hook up with. He was good at making an ass out of himself, but half the time, he was just upping an innocent thing into trouble.

But Max saw the one good thing about Billy dying was that she could use it as an excuse and a good one. Over the years, she’d watched Billy sweet talk plenty of adults. She’d picked up some tricks that she had blatantly used, flashing an overly-innocent smile at the teacher and letting the sunlight catch the leftover tears and her stuffy cheeks. Max was young enough that she could still pull the little girl act—which was perfect for this instance. The teacher had let her and Lucas off with a stern warning.

Max shoved her way through several boys crowding around a phone and plopped down at the table. She whipped out the notebook and _whapped_ it down, startling Mike.

“Jeez, Max! What’d you go and do that for?”

“So, guess what I did last night,” Max said, completely ignoring him. He shot her a glare.

Dustin raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“I researched MKUltra.”

Will frowned. “I thought Hop said he didn’t want any help right now.”

Max rolled her eyes. “Yeah, but it’s not like that’s true.”

Lucas blinked. “It’s not?”

“Well, no,” Max said, wondering if these kids always followed instructions, “of course, not. He just wanted to get us out of the way. Adults are always like that. And besides, he’s super busy right now. Like, doesn’t he have his normal police work, organizing patrols, _and_ research? He’ll probably be too busy to get to it right away, and we need to find that gate. And this is something _we_ can do. It’s not like we’re in any danger!”

Lucas was nodding along, and Mike was looking like he was sort of considering it. Dustin’s eyes were narrowed. “Alright, Madmax, convince me.”

Max flipped open the notebook and pulled out several sheets of folded up paper from between the pages. “So, I started out with the general info, you know? Like who ran it and who approved that shit and everything like that. Apparently, it was part of the CIA, but it was a _really_ big program. The government hasn’t ever released all the information on it, just the general overview. But, given what we know about El, there’s a few things we can infer.” She slid the first piece of paper over to Dustin. “Firstly, the program was never shut down. Sure, the LSD parts of it were, but that’s because the feds realized that they can’t do mind-control with drugs. Or, at least, those drugs. Secondly, the program was never just about mind-control. I think—and this is a big think—they were trying to make babies like El, but didn’t really want to tell anyone.”

Dustin passed the sheet to Lucas and grabbed for the next one. It was an article on a Dr. Martin Brenner, an intern when MKUltra was “shut down.”

“Now,” Max continued, “I’m not sure how they figured it out, but obviously, they succeeded. However, I think it goes bigger than just super-babies like El.”

Mike raised an eyebrow. “Why do you think that?”

“Because,” Max said, sliding another article to him, “I learned that Hawkins lab wasn’t the only one working on the project.”

“What?” Mike said, grabbing it. Dustin went for it too, and they briefly scuffled over it. Their argument was ended by El, who floated the paper over their heads and grabbed it, reading it with wide eyes.

“There was a lab in San Diego,” she said faintly.

Max nodded. “Yup.”

Will frowned. “Isn’t that where you’re from?”

Max nodded again. “Yeah, but that’s not really significant right now. What _is_ significant is the fact that there were several children who went missing in the ‘90s.”

“What?” Lucas asked. “Like, the lab kidnapped them?”

“Yeah, exactly like that. And the reason I think that is because there was a disaster about a decade and a half later with the lab. A huge chunk was blown out of one wall. Several soldiers were injured, actually.”

“Well, what do you think happened?” Dustin said.

Max bit her lip, hesitant to say. Lucas nudged her, “Come on, you can say it.”

She glanced at him and he gave her a nod. She said, “Well, I think they figured out how to give people powers.”

The party stared at her.

“Like, Captain America?” Dustin asked, trying not to sound incredulous and failing.

“Okay, well, think about it.” Max said. “It makes sense. The fifties and sixties were when the cold war was thriving and the eugenics movement boomed. A bunch of countries were trying to make super soldiers and were experimenting with many different drugs and things. That’s where Project MKUltra stemmed from, originally. And even though they succeeded with people like El—there were only a limited number of people who participated in the project in the first place, and even less than that number continued on. Those super-babies were really rare. If they wanted to make super soldiers, they had to have a better way to give people powers. Maybe they just figured it out.”

The party’s expression ranged from almost cold (Will) to furious (Mike). Dustin looked like he was excited and Lucas looked like he was pondering the possibility.

Finally, Mike asked, “You really think they wanted to make El into a super soldier?”

Max shrugged. “I don’t know. You guys have more experience with them than I do. It just seems possible, you know? America has always been about being prepared for anything. Maybe their preparation took the form of kidnapping newborn babies and trying to turn them into killing machines.”

Mike winced, looking at El. Max didn’t know how to catalogue the look, just that it was intense. El wasn’t returning it, either. She was reading the article about Brenner, one finger gently brushing his picture.

“Papa,” she said.

Max frowned. “Wait, he’s your _dad?”_

“No,” Dustin hurried to explain. “He was the head of Hawkins lab; he was the person she most interacted with. He told her to call him ‘papa.’ As far as we know, they’re not actually related.”

“Oh,” Max said, vaguely creeped out.

“Yeah,” Mike said flatly. “Oh.”

“So, have you ever seen the lab?” Lucas asked.

Max shrugged. “Yeah, but not up close. It’s to the north of San Diego, in an industrial district. It’s on a government base, completely closed off. You couldn’t really get close. All I ever saw was four concrete walls and a roof.”

“Yeah, that’s how Hawkins lab was, too. Will and Mike got to go in last year when Owens was doing those ‘checkups.’”

“What was it like?” Max asked.

“A lot of white walls,” Will said. “And some stupid fucking doctors. Other than that, a huge gate that they kept trying to burn and that kept spreading.” Will made a plaintive gesture. “You know, the normal stuff.”

Max cracked a smile. She had a feeling that Will was actually pretty funny, if given the chance to speak.

“So,” Dustin asked, “What do you think happened to the lab in San Diego? Is it still operating?”

“Yup,” Max said. “I looked them up. Their website was super sparse. They just said they were working with the Department of Energy, which, hello people, red fucking flag there. By the way, how did Hawkins lab get mixed up with the Upside Down, anyway?”

El looked at her. “They wanted me to look for men from Russia.”

Max raised her eyebrows. “Russia?”

El nodded. “Yeah. They wanted me to spy on them from the void. While I was looking, I felt the Demogorgon. Papa wanted me to go back in and try to make contact. Then…the gate opened.”

Max sat back, considering. “So, they didn’t want you to open it? It was accidental?”

“Yes,” El said. “It just happened.”

“Huh,” Max said, thinking. “So what are the odds that the other lab managed to stumble on the Upside Down, too?”

They all looked at her with alarmed expressions, as if they just realized that was a possibility.

“Son of a _bitch,”_ Dustin snarled.

“Does that mean the gate is in San Diego?” Will asked. “Will El have to go there to close it?”

“What if she _can’t_ close it?” Max asked.

“What does _that_ mean?” Mike sounded offended.

“Well,” Max hurried to explain, “what if El was able to close the gate because she opened it? Like, what if it’s specific to the person who made it in the first place? We don’t really know how any of this works.” Max turned to El, “How did you close it the first time?”

El frowned. “I pulled.”

“Pulled?” Mike asked. “Pulled what?”

“Just…pulled. There was the gate and I felt it. It was cold.”

“Cold how?” Lucas asked her.

El made a faint gesture with her hands. “Cold. It hurt me, like I was trying to grab dry ice.”

Dustin leaned forward a little bit. “Like with your hands? Or your power?”

“My power,” El said. “There was a lot of cold. Just spilling out of the gate. I tried to gather it up and push it back in and slam the door. Like I do to Jim when he makes me angry.”

“Well,” Will said. “The Mindflayer likes cold. And it’s always cold in the Upside Down. Are you sure that wasn’t just like, the atmosphere?”

“The _atmosphere?”_ Dustin demanded. “What kind of atmosphere would the Upside Down have?”

“Well, it has to have _something,”_ Will snapped. “I was able to breathe there. I besides, it’s supposed to be the corrupted version of our world, right? So it had to have an atmosphere before the Mindflayer got ahold of it.”

Dustin opened his mouth to argue, but Lucas cut him off. “Okay, the potential atmosphere of the Upside Down doesn’t matter right now. What matters is: what if Max is right? What if El can’t close the new gate?”

There was a silence as everyone mulled over that question. What would their lives be like if they constantly had to fight the Mindflayer? It wasn’t a pleasant thought.  
“How did you know you could close it in the first place?” Max asked.

El opened her mouth, then closed it. “I just…knew. Like the way Mike knows he can’t run the mile in gym.”

Mike made a protesting noise as Max giggled and Will laughed.

Dustin asked, “Well, that means that you have a pretty good hold on your power. You know? Like, you know what you can or can’t do with it. So—did you know you could close it because you opened it, or because it was there and it needed closing?”

El frowned. “I—the second one, I think.”

“You think?” Lucas asked.

El nodded.

“Well, that doesn’t help much,” Lucas muttered.

“Hey,” Mike snapped. “Lay off.”

Lucas held up his hands, his eyebrows raised in judgmental surrender. Max had the feeling that this was a well-worn argument.

“We can worry about that later,” Max put in. “We have to find the gate, first.”

“Was there a gate in San Diego?” Dustin pondered, looking at Max.

Max sputtered. “I don’t know! Like, how can you tell there’s an interdimensional rip beneath your city?”

“Did you ever see some demodogs?”

“No.”

“How about rotting fields?”

“I’m not a farmer, Dustin.”

“Okay, well…”

“What about missing cats?” Will asked.

Max frowned at him.

“Well, think about it. Dart ate Dustin’s cat Mews, right? And if there were demodogs in the city, then they had to eat something. Did you ever notice a bunch of neighborhood cats going missing?”

Max opened her mouth. “I—I don’t know. We never had pets; Neil hated them. And we had both coyotes and raccoons—both of which liked a house cat for a nice snack. I couldn’t say which way, really.”

They looked disappointed.

“I mean,” Max bit her lip. “Our neighbor had a cat that was always bothering Billy. He loved her. But I didn’t see her the last week after…”

Mike watched her. “After…?”

“Nothing,” Lucas said, quickly.

Mike frowned at him, obviously putting together the fact that Lucas was covering for her, but before he could say anything about it, Dustin spoke up, “What was the cat’s name?” He looked interested.

“Peppin,” Max said.

“What kind?”

“A Russian Blue. She was sort of senile towards the end. But she still recognized Billy. She’d crawl over the fence and into our yard and meow outside his window until he pet her.”

“Awwww, sounds cute,” Dustin said, smiling, and Mike gave him a look.

Dustin opened his mouth and Mike said, “The cat doesn’t matter, Dustin. We’re trying to figure out if there are demodogs in San Diego.”  
Dustin huffed, rolling his eyes, and Will jumped in before he could say anything else. “Okay, so the cat is a dead end. What else do the demodogs do that Max might recognize?”

There was a silence while everyone thought about it. “I don’t know, dude,” Lucas muttered. “Shriek and kill people?”

Max cracked a smile.

Everyone was silent for another moment before El said, “Jim will want to know about this. We should take this to him.”

Mike winced. “He won’t like that we disobeyed his orders.”

Max snorted, “You guys didn’t, I did. If he wants to get mad, he can get mad at me.”

* * *

The party decided to tell Steve before they told Hopper. Max was beginning to realize that Steve was the designated adult-who-was-cool for the group; the person they could go to when they did something and needed help but didn’t want to get in trouble for it. They referred to Steve as a babysitter, but, hearing about what he did, he didn’t sound like a babysitter to Max; more like a personal chauffer and a cool friend rolled into one.

His car, Max noted, was nice in that way that was uppity and posh. Living with car-nut Billy had given Max an education on cars that she hadn’t really wanted, but got anyway. Billy’s car was showy and loud, something that was meant to draw attention and brag at the same time. It seemed to Max that every time they drove around, Billy would get compliments on it, usually from middle-aged men driving a dented 2004 sedan who dreamed of owning a car like Billy’s someday. Steve’s car was nearly the opposite of the Camaro. It was practically a stealth car—drawn along the same lines as a generic sedan, with nice maroon paint and a nice interior, but it wasn’t supposed to be something to show off. It was a business man’s car, something that showcased money to the people who would care. It wasn’t made to draw attention.

Steve drove it with a recklessness that told Max that he either didn’t know how much it cost, or didn’t care.

Billy drove wildly too, sometimes, but it was a controlled wildness, like he could do the tricks that he did because he practiced them over and over and over and was _very_ confident in his ability to control the car. The Camaro was Billy’s baby: he would have never risked crashing it and losing any semblance of freedom. Steve, on the other hand, drove his car as if it were a tool. Something to be taken care of, but was ultimately sacrificial if need be.

When they got to Steve’s house, Max was confronted with intense seventies opulence. It was decorated to be Lana-del-Ray chic, Max thought. Imitating a period in history that people liked to glamorize, but not truly _accurate._ She thought this because her own house also had horrible seventies interior design, but the authentic stuff: grayed beige carpet, terribly decorated bathrooms in weird colors, and light fixtures that were nearly fifty years out of date.

The party spilled into Steve’s house with the air of distant cousins—a relation that was close enough to raid the fridge, but not close enough to feel truly at home. Max followed Lucas as he said, “C’mon,” and led her to the kitchen table. She took a seat as Dustin slid her a can of Dr. Pepper.

“Thanks,” she said, popping the tab.

“So,” Steve said, coming through the doorway. “What did you want to talk about?” He met her eyes, asking a silent question.

Max shook her head: _no, this isn’t about Billy._ Steve nodded, glancing to where Mike was asking El what she wanted to eat. Will and Dustin came and sat down at the table, next to Lucas.

“Mike!” He called. “We’re starting!”

“O_kay_!” Mike called back, irritably.

_Is he always annoyed?_ Max wondered. It seemed to her that he was always snapping something at someone, except for maybe El.

Steve sighed and shook his head, then turned back to them. “So?”

Max opened her mouth to tell him about her research, but what came out instead was, “How are you doing? Y’know, with everything?”

Steve shrugged. “I’m fine, Max.”

“Really? So those bags under your eyes are because you _like_ staying awake all night?”

“Oh, like you’re sleeping any better,” Steve snapped. Then he sighed. “Sorry, that was mean. You don’t have to look after me, Max. I’m a big boy; I’ll be fine.”

Dustin was frowning. “Wait, what? Does Max know something we don’t? Steve?”

Steve shot Max a look like, _this is your fault,_ and then said, “Nothing, Dustin.”

Dustin crossed his arms. “It’s not nothing, Steve. Max is right, you look terrible. What happened?”

_“Nothing,_ Dustin.”

Dustin raised his chin and set his jaw. It was the most stubborn look that Max had ever seen. “It’s not nothing, Steve. And I’m going to sit here and stare at you until you tell me.”

Steve shot him a look. “Come on, Dustin.”

Dustin stared at him, not even blinking. Lucas looked on with amusement. “You know, he’s not going to move until you tell him, Steve. You’re really better off telling him.”

Lucas probably hadn’t made the connection, Max thought. Even though she had told him that Steve had been friends with Billy, that little detail had sort of been lost in the face of everything else she’d told him.

Steve glared back at Dustin. “Leave it, Dustin.”

“Is this about Billy?” El asked, wandering into the room with a plate of apples and peanut butter in her hands and Mike on her tail.

Max started. “How do you know about Billy?”

El shrugged, taking a seat. “You think really loudly, sometimes.”

Max’s eyes bugged out as she stared at El. “You can _read minds?_ And you didn’t _tell me!”_

“Not really read minds,” Will jumped in. “El’s just kind of psychic. She can pick up on stuff if you really concentrate on it.”

“Steve has been really worried,” El put in.

Steve scowled, “Not anymore.”

“So, who is he?” Mike asked.

Max looked down at the table, fiddling with the tab on her can. “He was my brother.”

“Your brother?” Dustin cocked his head. “I didn’t know you had one.”

“Yeah, you mentioned that he wasn’t in Hawkins,” Mike said. “What happened?”

Max looked at Steve, feeling Lucas shift beside her. “Oh!” He said.

“You _just_ figured it out?” she deadpanned.

Lucas’s leg started jittering under the table. “Sorry, I forgot about what you said.”

“Yeah,” Max scoffed.

“Okay, _what_ is going on?” Dustin’s question increased in volume. “Am I the only one here who doesn’t know what’s going on?”

Steve sighed. “Max’s brother Billy was my best friend for a long time. He recently…passed on.”

El frowned. “Passed on?”

“He means died,” Mike explained quietly.

The party was silent for a moment. Max caught Will’s expression. He looked…shellshocked. A strange sort of sad and appalled and pitying. Max resisted the urge to snap at him.

“Oh,” Dustin said. “I’m sorry, I…didn’t realize.”

“Yeah,” Max snapped at him. “That’s why you don’t pry.”

Dustin shrank under her glower.

“Anyway,” Steve asserted. “I’m guessing Max didn’t drag all of you to my house to talk about Billy. So, what did you want to talk about?”

Max pushed her notebook towards him. “I did some research.”

Steve shot her a suspicious look before opening it to see the articles. “Max, Hop explicitly told you guys not to look into Project MKUltra!”

“I know, I know,” Max protested. “But it’s just _research,_ it’s not like we’re in any danger! I just wanted to know more about it.”

Steve glared, “it’s the spirit of the thing, Max. It’s about obeying Hop’s orders, not what those orders are.”

Max rolled her eyes. To Lucas, “I thought you said he was cool.”

“He _is_ cool, Max. He just feels like he has to put up a token resistance so he doesn’t feel like he’s totally losing control.”

“Hey!” Steve protested, partially drowned out by the party’s agreement.

Max snorted. “Fine. Read the articles though, they’re important.”

Steve began to scan them as El took one of the apple slices and dipped them into the peanut butter. She bit with relish, obviously enjoying her snack immensely.

Steve made a noise, “San Diego? There’s a lab in San Diego?”

Max nodded. “Yup. Imagine that.”

Steve looked her in the eye. “Do you think…” He trailed off.

Max stared at him, and then realization hit and she felt all her blood rush from her face. No—no it couldn’t be. There was no way the Upside Down had killed Billy. _No way._

“No, it can’t be,” Max protested. “He drowned. It couldn’t have been…”

Steve was still looking at her, wearing a stricken expression. “Max…”

She vigorously shook her head. “_No._ We saw his body. It—it was whole. He drowned, Steve. _He drowned.”_

“Are you sure it was his body?” Mike asked.

Max rounded on him. “What the _fuck_ does that mean?” she snarled.

“Max,” Lucas said.

“No, don’t you ‘Max,’ me.” Something inside her snapped, like a rope that had been holding her back. Rage eclipsed her faculties, rearing up in a wave of black emotion. Her ears buzzed, her vision shorting out until all she could think about was how _angry_ she was. It was like a living thing, reaching into her head and forcefully taking the reins. Some part of her, small and meek, observed that this wasn’t who she was. She didn’t get mad like this—didn’t try to hurt people like this. That was _Billy,_ Billy who was the unpredictable one. _Billy,_ who had drowned. Max tried to go over the table, nails scrabbling on the surface, hands like crone’s claws, grasping for Mike.

How _dare_ he ask that? As if she hadn’t seen Billy’s face every day since she was nine? “You’re saying that I couldn’t recognize my own brother’s _body?_ You asshole, I know what Billy looks like! You _motherfucker_—”

Strong hands pinned her to her chair. She let out an enraged scream, writhing under them. “Let me _go! Let me go—let me go—let me go!”_

“Calm down, Max!” Lucas shouted.

_“No—”_

“Max,” Steve interrupted, and she was so taken aback by his voice that she stopped struggling. Something about him was different, she saw. This Steve, who was still holding her down, was calm in the face of her fury. He didn’t look like normal Steve, who dressed in polos and drove expensive cars like they came a dime a dozen. He looked competent, calm. Like he could handle fighting off a bunch of demodogs and protecting a party of reckless kids. Suddenly, Max understood why everyone’s parents trusted him.  
“Max,” he said again. “Mike asked that question for a reason. When the Upside Down took Will, the state faked his death by making a wax corpse stuffed with cotton. So, we’ll ask again. Was it Billy?”

Max stared at him, trying to make her mouth—her whole _body_—work. _Was it Billy?_ Something sick squirmed in her stomach. Was her brother’s body lost in the belly of some—some _monster_ because the lab in San Diego had decided he was an acceptable casualty? Or—or worse, was he lost—_lost_ in the Upside Down because the government decided that they couldn’t know and he’d been waiting for someone to realize and come save him and they hadn’t? Because they’d been tricked by some wax _mannequin?_ Had she abandoned her brother?

Max made a noise—a gasp and a sob all in one—and collapsed in her chair. Tears spilled over her cheeks and landed on the table. She shuddered, wrapping her arms around her middle, pressing her forehead to the wood, static in her ears and some sort of desolation wreaking havoc in her brain.

Had Billy been waiting for her to save him? Had he felt betrayed, when those things came for him? Bile rose in her throat. _Oh god, I bet they ripped him apart. I bet they ate him one bit at a time while he was still alive. I bet_—the contents of her stomach rose up, rebelling against the gory image of demodogs devouring her brother alive, and Max choked. She leapt up from the table, bolting for the bathroom.

* * *

Steve watched Max sprint from the room, one hand clapped over her mouth, and felt a little sick himself. The idea that the Upside Down had killed _Billy,_ the one person whom Steve had thought had been safe from all this supernatural craziness, was the sort of thought that would haunt Steve’s dreams for months.

Lucas stood to go after Max, worried and regretful, and Steve put a hand to his chest. “Leave it, Lucas.”

Lucas looked at him like he was crazy.

“I mean it, Lucas. She just got told that her brother, someone she loved _very much,_ was killed by interdimensional aliens. Let her have some alone time.”

The sounds of retching echoed from the bathroom. Steve winced, but held Lucas in place when he moved again. Lucas fell back in his chair, glaring at Steve. He ignored him, going back around the table to look at the notebook again. Steve suddenly felt exhausted. The weight of all this new knowledge settled on his shoulders; new waves of grief pounded against the shores of his mind. He just wanted to _sleep._ Max’s reaction seemed to make a lot more sense to him, suddenly. He slumped in his chair, tempted to give in right there. They were going to have to tell Hopper—the knowledge that Hawkins lab wasn’t the only one to be involved in the Upside Down was significant. It would shape all other plans going from here. Hop and Joyce needed to know.

He’d call them in a little while.

Steve raised his head. Everyone but Lucas was watching him. Dustin looked worried and bewildered. Mike looked, as always, half-belligerent and maybe a little bit troubled. Steve could guess that Mike could empathize with Max just small bit, here. His sister was, after all, knee-deep in Upside Down business. Nancy’s death was more likely to be at the hands of a demodog than natural. Lucas still looked like he would bolt for Max at any minute, and Will was—checked out. He was staring at the table wide-eyed. He was frozen, muscles locked and sweat dampening his hair.

“Shit,” Steve muttered, making to get up, but Mike was already on it.

“Will?” He asked. “Will, are you okay?” Mike gently laid one hand on his arm. Will flinched but did nothing else.

“He’s having a flashback,” Steve said. “Get him to my room.”

Together, Mike and Steve handled him up and guided him up the stairs. Steve opened all his curtains and turned on all the lights while Mike sat down with Will on the bed. They had learned, after a few of these episodes, that Will felt best when he was in an enclosed, bright room. Some place that didn’t evoke the Upside Down at all—warm and soft, preferably with someone else there. He didn’t like blankets or something else constricting his movements. Steve grabbed the space heater that he kept in his room for this very thing and set it down at Will’s feet, turning it on. Even though his house was a nice seventy-two degrees, Will was always cold after. He had found that warmth was the best way to snap himself out of it. He usually took a bath at home, but Steve knew that they didn’t really have time for one right now. The space heater was a good second option.

Steve closed the door behind him, hearing Mike murmuring softly to Will. Steve went back downstairs, where Dustin and Lucas were arguing with their eyes and El was finishing her plate of apples and peanut butter.

Steve took a deep breath and sat down. “So, I’m assuming one of you knows everything that Max figured out. Want to tell me about it?”

For a second, Dustin and Lucas looked like they were going to ask about Will. Steve cut them off with a look.

“Uh, right,” Dustin said. “Max thinks they’re trying to make super soldiers.”

Steve raised an eyebrow. “Like, Captain America?”

“That’s what I said!”

“Sort of,” Lucas splayed his fingers and shimmied them up and down, in the _iffy_ gesture. “She talked a lot about how the MKUltra program was originally supposed to beef up the army with superpowered people like El, except for the fact that babies like her were really rare, so they had to figure out a different way to give people powers. According to Max, there were several kids who went missing from San Diego, and then some years later, an accident happened at the lab. She thinks they broke out.”

“With,” Dustin said, “if Max is right, their newly-acquired powers.”

“Oh,” Steve said.

They nodded.

“Well, that changes things.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, so I know that some of you might be mad at me for making the party as a whole oblivious to who Billy is and what happened to him when Max talked about it in front of all of them in a previous chapter, but, when I really thought about it and thought about roudy conversations with my own friends and family...it's really not that far of a stretch. A lot of information is lost on people who are not explicitly paying attention, and I think that it adds a note of realism to the story to have the people who were preoccupied with something else to have missed a lot of information, even if they were in ear shot. So! I left it in and didn't try to reconfigure the story. Anyhoo, sorry for the long wait. Also, I'm not proud of America's constant need to be militarily prepared at all times, but it's the reality, so...I also left that in.
> 
> Also, on a third note, I don't feel that Max is in any way responsible for rescuing Billy or keeping him out of harm's way. However, I do think that one way her character could be read is being bonded with Billy since Billy is shown to be the one to take the punishments for Max's wrongdoings. This could, potentially, make her feel that she is responsible _any_ time he gets hurt, not just when she does something wrong (and even then, in reality, she is not responsible _at all_). This is something I wanted to explore and it really frustrated me that the Duffers didn't at all address the potential psychological ramifications of knowing that Max's actions were leading to someone else getting hurt, especially on a thirteen year-old-child. It's also a way, I think, for her grief to manifest since grief is really complicated and feelings that you never would have had otherwise make themselves known in times like this.


	14. Many Far Wiser

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from Edgar Allen Poe's _Annabel Lee._  
This one's a short one, guys, sorry.   
Unbetaed.

Billy tightened his hands on the wheel of the Camaro. His knuckles creaked against the firm leather, smooth from years of calloused grips holding onto it. Billy scanned out his windshield, taking in the landscape outside. He was driving in the middle of the desert, the sun going down behind him, the road absolutely empty in front of him.

That’s what Billy had liked absolutely the best about California—the emptiness of the desert bleeding into the bustling city. The desert was untamable—heat and scrub plants and so much space. Sure, an arrogant businessman or two could level the top of a mesa or build a high-rise by the beach, but that didn’t mean that the desert wasn’t going to creep back in with a vengeance. Coyotes would always run in the cities, no matter how many people kept a BB gun and wildlife-proof fences. Goat heads would always propagate _somehow,_ no matter the strength of the weed-killer you bought or how many times you pulled the little devils out of the ground, root first. Golf courses would always be taken over eventually by sage and native wildflowers and there was fuck-all the rich CEOs back in New York could do about it.

No matter how many people decided to make their home in the desert, it would always come back. There was something enchanting to Billy about that—something that he liked about the fact that no matter how many people tried to deny the nature of the desert, they would never be able to change it.

But there was something eerie about it now. Billy was heading east on I-40, feeling so small in the face of so much space, through the tip of Texas, before catching I-70 in Oklahoma. He’d crossed into Texas a few hours ago and was looking for a hotel to stop at for the night. He normally wasn’t opposed to sleeping in his car; the seats of the Camaro weren’t the most comfortable, but he kept a blanket and an old pillow in the trunk just in case. However, after San Diego, he wasn’t exactly willing to sleep with so little protection around him. He was relying mostly on speed to keep ahead of those dog-things, but he was pretty damn sure that the car wasn’t going to do jackshit if they decided to swarm it. He wished, not for the first time, that he still had the machine gun from the lab, but he’d lost it in his mad dash through San Diego trying to get to Cynthia’s.

The shotgun would have to do for now.

At first, Billy had thought that he’d left the monsters behind when he’d left the lab. He thought that they would give up on him as soon as he was far enough away, but those things had followed him onto the road. The first night, he had awakened to the high-pitched keening of the dog-things canvassing the land for him. He wasn’t sure that they were intelligent enough to recognize his car, and he’d leapt out of bed, frantically searching for his things.

_Relax,_ the voice had said. _They’re still miles away. And the sun will be up soon, which will limit their movements._

“How can I hear them?” He’d gasped out.

_Because I’m letting you. It is important for you to know that they are out there. Now, sleep. They won’t be anywhere close for a few more hours yet._

He’d sputtered, “Sleep?” wondering how the fuck he was supposed to sleep with the dog-things’ howls still lodged in his eardrums, but the voice had pressed a heavy sort of fatigue into his mind, and he’d fallen into a restless slumber until around 9, when the sun was up and the voice was insisting on going. 

Billy pulled into a bed-and-breakfast looking place in the middle of nowhere, Texas. WELCOME TO MCLEAN, the sign had declared when he had sped past it. He pushed the revolver into his waistband, made sure to cover it with his jacket, and locked the car. It was Texas, he thought, not even bothering to conceal the shotgun.

He walked into the door to find a very cheery white guy greeting him.

“Well, hello, there,” he said, beaming at Billy. “What can I do for you this lovely night?”

Billy was mildly taken aback. Most people who saw Billy started off distantly polite and then faded to a sullen silence when they realized that Billy was mean and no amount of politeness was going to change that. But this man was overtly friendly, regarding Billy as if he was a long-lost son who’d just made his way home.

Billy licked his lip and returned the smile with a shark-grin of his own. “I’d like a room.” 

If this was California, Billy might bother to flirt, only because he knew that getting on service people’s good side was a good way to get a little extra care. But, as he had said before, this was Texas. Might be better to stay in the closet for this little interaction, just in case.

The man bobbed his head. “We got lots of those, son. What do you need?”

“Just one bed, for a night.”

“Travellin’ through?”

Billy nodded, feeling his walls go immediately up. “Yeah. Just on my way through.”

“Where you goin’?” the man asked, typing something up on his computer. He looked back at Billy, smiling and cheerful in an invasive way.

Billy tried to smile back, but was getting increasingly uncomfortable. He’d never trusted strangers asking questions much, a lesson that Neil had drilled into his head for as long as Billy could remember. And there was something about this guy that was…off, Billy thought. That felt like he wanted to be Billy’s friend, which _had_ to be an act. “Louisiana,” Billy answered. “New Orleans.”

“Ah,” the man nodded. “French Quarter? Good choice, a night out on the town’s always fun. That’ll be $80 even. And I’ll need a name for the room.”

Billy was very sure that this place charged more than $80 a night for a room and some breakfast. Billy stared at him, and the man smiled back.

“Will that be cash or card, sir?”

Billy slapped down four twenty-dollar bills, barely restraining himself from sneering that he wasn’t a charity case. He wasn’t sure what about him gave the man that impression; Billy was dressed semi-well—tank-top and bomber with some jeans—and he didn’t have bruises or anything on his face to make him look like a victim. Sure, he might look a little young, but Billy had always been good at shedding his youth. Most of the time, he could get into clubs or gay bars with a flirty smile and his (fake) name. Most of the time, his hook-ups hadn’t even realized that he’d been jail-bait.

But the pride-pricking truth was that Billy couldn’t afford to turn down some charity. He was low on cash and hadn’t found a motel in any of the other places he’d come through, although he was sure he could have found one in Amarillo if he’d looked. But Billy had wanted to use the last hours of the day to squeeze in just a few more miles. He knew the dog-things weren’t allergic to sunlight, or anything like that, but they didn’t seem to like it and tried to stay out of it as much as possible. It was at night when the swarms came, and that meant that Billy either had to be going forty over the speed-limit or locked nicely in a hotel room with thick walls and gun under his pillow. This was the first place he had come across after the sun had set. He’d been hearing occasional shrieks and growls for the past fifteen minutes, and he was anxious to get his shotgun and settle in for a long night.

The man took them with a grin and said, “Cash, then. And the name?”

“Zach McCullen.”

“Would you like a receipt, sir?”

“No, just my room key.”

The man smirked. “Ready to settle in? You got a girl out there or something?”

Billy tried for a natural sounding laugh. It came out huskier, which he was fine with, because it distracted from his clenched fists and tense stance. “Or something.”

The man nodded, handed the room key over and said, “It’ll be around the corner, down at the end. You’re on the first floor, very back.”

“Thanks,” Billy said shortly, and walked out the door before the man could cast him any more smiles.

Billy got back in the Camaro and pulled around back, glancing at the layout of the B&B as he did so. It was a large square lot, four houses connected, with a courtyard in the middle. It was probably some historical building or some shit, as B&Bs always liked to brag about, but Billy didn’t care. He just wanted to get inside. He parked in front of the house at the very back, screeching to a stop a little bit, and killed the engine. He grabbed the gun and his key and popped the trunk. A chittering sounded from somewhere to his left and Billy’s head snapped up, shotgun already in his hand and pointed downrange. He cocked it, peering into the darkness. This bed and breakfast was on the very eastern edge of town and beyond it extended the vast expanse of Texas scrubland.

Billy held his breath, looking down the sights and waiting for something to shoot at. _Come and get me, fuckers._

The problem with the dog-things was he could hear them for miles, at least. Their noises, their chitters and shrieks and cries travelled along the land forever—stretching out and spreading like some sort of twisted web. Hearing them let him know they were there, but it didn’t tell them how close they were. They could be two seconds away or two hours. And if the voice didn’t deign to tell him, he didn’t know.

After waiting a moment more, he grabbed his duffle and slammed the trunk, making sure the car was locked on the way to the door. He held the key—a real room key, not a piece of plastic—with shaking hands. It scraped against the lock, not quite catching, until Billy turned it over and it slid in with a satisfying vibration.

Billy turned it and flung himself into the room, slamming the door and leaning against it. He _hated_ those dog-things, with a vicious panic that paralyzed his brain. Billy flipped the lock, scanned the room. It was dim, only one lamp in the corner lit, but homey. The fleur-de-lis pattern of the wallpaper reminded him of the curling profile of a dog-thing. Unease twisted his gut. His father had done enough to drill into Billy the importance of “manliness,” but there was only one real lesson that Billy took away from it: fear was _never_ your friend. Fear doubled the dread; made you suffer twice. He wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t a goddamn coward. He squared his shoulders and glared into the room, taking in the rest of the details. Bed with white sheets and duvet, lamps on either bedside table, a dresser with a coffee pot on top, the door to the bathroom, and several large windows that looked out onto darkness.

He walked to the far wall and peered out, trying to see sleek shapes moving behind the glass. There was nothing out there but a few swaying trees.

_Might as well get some sleep while I can,_ Billy thought, not even bothering to change into pajamas or get under the covers. He just laid on the bed, the duffle by the door, the guns by his side. Billy closed his eyes, concentrating on his heartbeat, which was high and thready.

He took deep, even breaths in and out, focusing on how they felt in his nose. It was a trick he used to stop crying, something that had saved his ass several times with Neil. It took his mind off his panic and helped him clear his head. He breathed in and out again, feeling the day catch up to him. He was tired; muscles unwound, sinking into the soft mattress and he slipped closer to sleep. Yes, sleep; he needed it. He couldn’t stay awake for days straight and drive. He needed to get some rest.

_Sleep, Billy,_ the voice told him. _I will watch over you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> McClean is a real town in Texas; it's also really fucking small and I'm not really sure if it has any sort of B&Bs or motels in it, so just suspend some disbelief here, guys.


	15. Mea Culpa

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is Latin for "my fault."  
As always, unbetaed.  
TW for implied/referenced major character death.

The pool water rippled under the slight breeze coming out of the woods. Max stared at the shadows at the bottom, feeling her eyes un-focus and blur. 

After throwing up the contents of her stomach—which hadn’t been much—she’d rinsed her mouth under the faucet and gone to be alone. She had gravitated toward the pool because it was the place that Billy would’ve have spent the most time, had he been there. She kept trying to get his face out of her mind: the sneering lips, the accusing baby blues. _Why didn’t you save me, Madmax?_ He leered, _I thought you were invincible._

_I’m sorry, Billy,_ she thought, feeling her mind reach out and stretch, as if she could talk to him in the afterlife, as if she could rip through the veil between here and there and tell him one last thing. _I’m sorry. _

Footsteps scuffed on the pavement and she startled. Twisting, she saw Will standing a few feet away, looking at her. She turned back to the pool, kicked her feet in the warm water. 

Will came to sit beside her, crisscrossing his legs. Max waited for him to speak. 

“I was trapped in the Upside Down for a while.” 

“A week,” she corrected sharply. “Lucas told me. Nothing like the month it’s been for Billy.” 

Will flinched. She felt bad for attacking him. He was delicate, she thought, in a strange way. Not in the way that you would’ve thought—not when it came to demodogs or the Mindflayer, or anything with the Upside Down. From what she had observed, Will was typically pretty calm in the face of all the supernatural insanity. But there were moments when Max thought he would break if she made the wrong move. 

“Sorry,” she whispered. 

Will shook his head. “No, you’re right. It’s been a month, when I barely was able to survive a week. I get that. But…” 

“What? You thought I wanted to hear about what it would have been like for him?” Max’s voice was sharp, sharp and brittle and she couldn’t _stop_ it from being like that no matter how much she wanted to. Words just poured out her mouth without her permission. “You thought I wanted to hear about how _lonely,_ how _cold_ he was before he died? Is that it?” 

Will’s expression was steady. “I was there, Max. I experienced it. You didn’t. Everything I tell you would be true, not the wild, grief-stricken conjecture that your mind is feeding you right now.” 

It was Max’s turn to flinch. She looked away from him, feeling small and hopeless and stung. “Okay.” 

He fiddled with his sleeve, “The Upside Down’s like our world, just darker. It has these little floating bits of ash and spores and stuff in the air. The layout is the exact same as our world, so at first, I didn’t realize something was really wrong. But it was cold—so much colder than Hawkins in November. When the Demogorgon pulled me through one of his rips, I was still in my shed. I had gone for the shotgun, to try to defend myself. My dad taught me and Jonathan how to shoot, right before he left. I still remembered it. I thought that the light had gone out. I couldn’t really see anything. I ran inside, but my house…it was trashed. The roof was nearly missing and all the appliances in the kitchen were rusted. My room didn’t even have a bed, anymore. I took refuge in Castle Byers for a while, because it was still intact. But the Demogorgon…it was still after me. The Demogorgon had tried to…hurt me, but I shot it. That’s why it didn’t get me for a while, because it was injured and I was fast.” 

He shrugged, looking out to the woods bordering Steve’s house. “My phone wouldn’t work. I was just trapped, and cold, and absolutely terrified. But my mom got me back,” a small smile touched the edge of his mouth. “She didn’t stop, even when the state showed her my ‘body.’” 

Max made a pained noise. Will looked at her with that expression that was too old and so young all at once. “The point of this is, Max, that it wasn’t your fault. Your brother wasn’t your responsibility. Nothing you could have done would have helped him.” 

“What, and that’s supposed to _help?_ So the next time that one of those things comes for someone I love, I can just sit back and watch and say, ‘sorry, there’s nothing I can do’?” 

Will made a frustrated noise. _“No._ I’m saying it because he was your older brother. When I went missing, Jonathan searched everywhere. He made flyers and passed them out and he and Nancy tried to kill it, over and over, so that my mom could go into the Upside Down and get me.” 

Max stared at him. 

“Jonathan’s older than me, Max. Billy wasn’t your responsibility in the least. He was your mom’s and your dad’s. _They_ were supposed to protect him, not you.” 

Max sneered. “Neil has never a day in his life protected Billy. If anything, Billy needed protection _from_ him.” 

Will licked his lips. “Yeah, my dad was sort of like that, too. My mom kicked him out the first time he hit Jonathan.” 

“I wish my mom had done that,” she whispered. “All she does is watch, and wince sometimes. And Billy’s mom just…up and left one day. I wish she had been as strong as your mom.” 

Will smiled at that. “Yeah, she’s pretty strong. Everyone calls her crazy, but if she hadn’t been, then she would have never found me.” 

They shared a companionable silence for a moment, listening to the wind _soughing_ through the trees. Max contemplated what Will was telling her—that Billy’s life had not been her’s to save, or to doom. She knew she was just a kid, but who else would have stood up for him? Who else would have faced down those lab men; insisted on a true investigation? Not Neil, surely. And Susan had been useless to Billy as a mother _or_ a friend since she’d married Neil. She wouldn’t have done what Joyce Byers had in a million years. So that left it up to Max, who had failed as soon as the task had been set to her. She hadn’t even known there was a task to complete. And because of that, Billy had died, alone and cold and tired of fighting. 

The sliding doors opened and Steve stepped out, looking at them with solemn eyes. “I called Hopper and told him everything you researched. He’s calling a meeting at the Byers ASAP.” 

Max climbed out of the pool, the cool October breeze cutting at her legs where they had been in the heated water. Will scrambled to his feet and said, “I’ll get you a towel.” 

Max shot him a smile. “Thanks.” 

She walked over to Steve, who was looking at her with bearing worry. 

“I’m fine, Steve.” 

“I wasn’t going to ask if you were fine, Max. You’re not fine.” 

She looked away from him, feeling her mouth turn bitter. 

“Max, look at me.” 

She resolutely didn’t. Steve turned her face back to him with a gentle hand on her chin. Max found that she couldn’t meet his eyes. 

“I told you before, Max, that it’s not your fault. I still mean that.” 

“But it is, Steve. Don’t you see that? He had no one else. Neil saw that—that _fake_ and walked away. He moved us half-way across the country, Steve. He wouldn’t have fought for Billy for a million dollars. And my mom—she didn’t care about Billy. All she cared about was that Neil hit him instead of me. They wouldn’t have searched for him, which meant that it was up to me, and I failed. I failed, Steve.” Her voice broke on a sob and tears spilled over her cheeks, gathering at her chin. Steve made a gentle noise and hugged her, tight and secure and loving. 

“No,” he murmured. “Just because _they_ didn’t do their job as parents doesn’t mean that it fell to you. Billy took care of you as best he could and I understand the need to return that loyalty, but it’s not your fault. You’re just a kid, Max. You can’t save the world.” 

She clutched him, sobbing into his shirt, and let the desolation of lonely grief sweep through her. They stood there, in the warm October sun, mourning lost loves and the tragedy of children thrown to the world before their time.


	16. The Stars Never Rise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is from the poem _Annabel Lee,_ by Edgar Allen Poe.  
If you're reading this chapter, make sure to go back and read the last one, because I updated twice today since both chapters are short.  
Unbetaed, as always. TW for violence.

They were out there—Billy was just fucking waiting for them. The voice had woken him just minutes before, pressing urgency into his mind. 

_Awake!_

He could tell they were close because the voice was giving him distances with each noise they let out. Twenty yards, ten. Five four three. 

Billy gripped the shotgun with both hands and tried to steady his breathing. He clutched his mother’s saint’s medallion and prayed to whatever fucking god was up there—if there was one, which he wasn’t confident about at all—and opened the curtains. 

Billy was good in a fight, okay? Always had been. It wasn’t that he was trained or anything like that. It was just that he was aggressive. He liked to fight; liked the adrenaline running through his veins, the feeling of knowing you had the ability to hurt your opponent and _using_ it. 

But these things? Billy _hated_ fighting these things. Part of it was the lack of any sort of punching. He had good physical strength—his forte was taking hits and delivering them. When the fight dissolved into grabbing instead of real blows was when Billy was at his best, because he had the strength to flat-out hold his opponent down and do pretty much anything he wanted. But with these things, there was no wrestling or punching. Just a mad scramble to shoot them and hope they stayed the fuck down. He felt too keyed-up, like all the energy in his body was going to combust. 

Two yards. 

He’d managed to pin one down, in an alley in San Diego, once. It was the worst idea he’d ever had. It was slimy, and strong. It had flipped them in a split second, and was about to gut him when he’d slammed it upside the head with a brick. He had absolutely no desire to repeat the experience ever again. 

One. 

They came through the window, the sound of glass shattering and those damn high howls filling the air. 

Billy aimed and shot. 

The first one shrieked as it hit the ground, tumbling forward and hitching up against the bed. The second one was already attacking, a dark blur in his periphery. Billy spun, cocking the fore-end, and fired again. A third one swiped at him and Billy, too close to get the muzzle under it, flipped the gun in his hands and brained it. It went down and a fourth one was there, flying at his face. Billy tripped back, falling over, the dog-thing on top of him and the shotgun barring it between them. It snapped forward, diving for his face, and Billy pushed up on the gun, barely keeping it away. 

_Motherfucker,_ this thing was strong. 

Billy made a desperate, straining push and managed to flip them, pinning the dog-thing’s throat with the shotgun. He whipped out the revolver from his waistband and fired two shots into its chest. It went limp. Billy staggered up and went for the door. 

_Those were just a scouting party; there will be more company,_ the voice told him. 

He had to get out of there. They were hard to kill and came in droves. Half the time, he was just wasting bullets. Only a bullet right to the heart was effective, anything else was just useless. Billy wasn’t a good enough shot to make a gun truly useful in his hands. He needed something to hit them with—something that was good for bludgeoning, that would make use of his strength. Or something to cut them with, that would maim them, like a machete or—Billy spied a tool shed. An axe. 

He ran over, dropping his bag by his feet, and pulled out the revolver. He hit the lock with the butt and it fell open with a _clank._ He flung open the doors and stepped inside, skimming over rows and rows of tools in the dim light. There—a double bladed axe hung on the far wall. Billy crossed the shed in two strides and seized it. 

Then he was back out doors, not even bothering to lock up. The owners would find the wreckage soon enough, anyway. Billy threw his duffle, the shotgun, and the axe on the passenger seat, and shoved the key into the ignition. The adrenaline high had hit; his movements were sharp and precise, backed by a restrained power. Billy listened to the distant-but-getting-closer sound of more dog-things and knew, in the way the voice knew, that they would be there very soon, and peeled out, tires screeching. Then he gunned it.


	17. Nor the Demons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from Edgar Allen Poe's _Annabel Lee._  
TW for explicit violence.   
Unbetaed.

The second drive up to the Byers’ house in as many days was solemn and quiet. They had packed most of the party in Steve’s car, with El and Mike in Robin’s, who had swung by Steve’s house to help ferry the hordes of children over to the Byers. Max recognized Robin from the meeting the night before, and obviously Steve had told Robin about Max, because as soon as Robin had walked in the door, she had swept Steve and Max into a hug before even a greeting. Then she had proceeded to tell Max bad puns until she had laughed. It had been a soft, wet laugh, soaked in tears, but Robin had cheered like she’d won the lottery anyway. 

Max could feel Lucas’s eyes on her. She hadn’t said anything to him, just walked out to Steve’s car and sat in the back, staring out the window. Dustin had taken the front seat (something, Max was pretty sure, that happened regularly) and Lucas the middle seat, with Will on the other side. Five minutes into the drive, Lucas had taken her hand, wrapping his fingers in between hers, and squeezed gently. Max had squeezed back, and the rest of the drive passed in silence. 

In truth, Max didn’t really know what to say to Lucas. He had been the most supportive member of the party by far, but that didn’t mean he really could understand her feelings, at this point. It was frustrating, because Max wanted to tell him anyway. She wanted to go home, ensconce herself in her room, and curl up on her bed. She wanted him to be there, too; wanted him to cuddle up with her and hold her until the storm of her emotions passed and she was exhausted. She wanted to fall asleep with him, curled under the blankets, sharing each other’s breath. 

But they didn’t have time for that, apparently. There had been a controlled urgency to Steve’s driving as he’d headed through Hawkins to the other side of town. Max sensed that Steve knew something they didn’t. 

Pulling up to the Byers’ house, they were met with Joyce Byers’ worried eyes, ushering them into the slightly stuffy, once again overcrowded living room. No one commented on Max’s puffy face, and for that, she was grateful. 

Hopper was standing over the kitchen table, examining something on its surface. A frown furrowed his brow as he scratched his beard. He glanced up and waved them over. 

The party, Nancy, Jonathan, Robin, Steve, and Joyce all crowded around, fitting their bodies in cracks, the tallest in the back and shortest in the front so that everyone could see. 

“I did some investigating, today.” Hopper said. “With the new discovery of the rips, I thought I should check to see if the Mindflayer is forming tunnels, again.” 

“Is he?” Joyce asked. 

Hopper shook his head. “Not from what I could tell, no. But I did find something else, which is concerning to me.” He placed a finger on the map, southwest of the town, farther out than even the Byers’. “I found something here. It was…a sort of nest, I think. Filled with the bodies of small mammals, dark and cold and dank. I think that what the Mindflayer is doing is spitting out groups of demodogs and then housing them here. It looks like an old part of the tunnels. Like another hub.” 

Max heard Steve grunt “fuck” behind her. For once, there was no admonishment from Hopper or Joyce. 

“Were there any there when you found it?” Nancy asked. 

Hopper shook his head. “No, but there were a lot of bodies. I’d say there was a full pack of them that lived there.” 

“So where are they, if they weren’t there?” Mike wondered. 

“Who knows,” Jonathan said, “but nowhere good.” 

“So, what do we do?” Max asked. 

“We need to stop the Mindflayer.” Hop said. “We need to make sure _all_ gates are closed. And thanks to you, young lady—” Hopper looked at Max with withering eyes (Steve had, Max surmised from the accusing glare, called Hop and explained her research)—”and your complete disregard of my orders, we know that there is probably a gate in San Diego.” 

No one looked surprised at that, so Max assumed that Hopper had filled everyone else in on what Max had found out. 

“What do we do?” Dustin questioned. 

Hopper took a deep breath, as if preparing for a cold and deep plunge, and said, “We have El look for the gate.”

* * *

After a fuss was raised about how everyone thought that having El look for the gate in the void was a bad idea, it was agreed that they had no other option. If the gate was truly in San Diego, they would have to fly out there on short notice, leaving the rest of the group in Hawkins to defend against a potential horde of demodogs two to three people short. No one thought that was a good idea, but there also wasn’t a good alternative that didn’t involve the void, so eventually it was agreed that El was their best bet. 

In order to avoid another potential Demogorgon attack in the Byers’ house, they took a radio out to the shed, where El sat down on the cold concrete floor and wrapped a blindfold around her eyes. Max watched from the window of the kitchen, where the rest of the party was cloistered. When Hop had told them that they weren’t allowed to go with her, Mike had thrown a fit. Hopper had bodily hauled him into Will’s room, firmly talking over Mike’s screams. 

Joyce had given everyone a look, especially at her son’s puppy dog eyes and said, “No. Hop is right; if El finding the gate in the void allows a Demogorgon to come through, I am not having all you out there in danger. Nancy and Jonathan and Hop will be out there with her—they will fight it long enough to get her to safety. You all will stay in the house, with Steve and I, where we can keep an eye on you kids.” 

There had been a grumbling consensus that that was stupid, but neither Steve nor Joyce would budge on it. Hopper had stormed out of Will’s room, cocking his gun as he did, Mike’s shouts echoing behind him. He had slammed the door behind him and gone out to where Nancy and Jonathan were flanking the entryway to the shed. Jonathan held an axe and Nancy a rifle. They stared into the dimly lit room with stony expressions. 

Mike had stomped into the kitchen and proceeded to give everyone he could hell until they let him go out there to be with El. Both Steve and Joyce weathered his sneers with tired huffs. Robin, who was sitting at the table and studying the map, snickered once in a while at him. 

For a while, there was silence. Tension wound through the room: Steve paced, his bat in his hands, murmuring something to himself; Robin doodled something, checking a picture on her phone once in a while, constantly shifting; Joyce nibbled on her thumb nail, checking with the party every two minutes, her hands drifting to a shotgun on the counter; and the rest of them bickered. Dustin and Lucas’s voices rose and fell in a constant annoyed pitch, Will sitting by them on the couch in the living room, picking at his cuticles, and Mike glared as if his life depended on it. Max herself paced, wandering back and forth between the front window and the kitchen. 

She had been told a little bit about the Demogorgon and tried not to scream with the feeling of it. She felt wound too tight, like her skin was too small for her bones. She had surmised from the silences in between people’s words, from their hesitant glances and careful sentences that the Demogorgon had been a lot harder to kill than the demodogs. What would happen if one attacked them here? It had taken a very pissed off El to smite the last one into a smear on the wall; what if they couldn’t fight it again? Something like panic burst in her chest and she paced faster. She wasn’t going to watch another person die at the hands of those monsters; it wouldn’t be like last time. She wasn’t going to lose anyone else. 

She turned and took barely controlled steps back into the kitchen, where Steve was moving in front of the counter like a caged tiger. He kept looking out the window, studying what Max could only assume the shed, and then doing an abrupt about-face and going back the way he came. Joyce was leaning against the counter, one hand on the stock of the shotgun. Her face was pinched and determined. She didn’t look like a woman preparing to go into battle for her loved ones; no, she looked like a mama bear, protective and steady and _sure,_ as if the knowledge that she would do anything to keep her children safe was enough. It steadied Max, calming her heartbeat and settling her shaky hands. 

The kids had not been given weapons, because they weren’t meant to be fighting anything, but Max had seen Joyce carrying hammers from the shed into the house. Max had a feeling that the kids weren’t _meant_ to fight, but that didn’t mean that things would go their way. That Joyce knew that and wanted to be prepared anyway. 

Voices sounded outside and everyone’s heads snapped up, zeroing in on the door, which opened up to reveal Hopper, El, Nancy, and Jonathan. No Demogorgon. Max deflated with relief. 

Mike was already up, going to Eleven, who hugged him tightly. “What did you find?” 

“She found the gate,” Hopper answered. “She could tell it was far away from here. The good news is that she could touch it. The bad news is that the Mindflayer could feel her touching it.” 

Everyone took a moment to digest that. “So, what does that mean for us?” Robin asked. 

Everyone looked at El, who bit her lip. “He’s coming for us. He’s angry. Angry that we figured it out.” 

Nancy swallowed and raised her chin. Max could see several other people girding themselves as well, puffing out chests and gripping weapons and readying stances. They were getting ready to fight. “So, can you close it? In the void?” 

El nodded. “I can. But I have to focus on it. It’ll be harder than what I did before.” 

“The demodogs are coming for her,” Hopper said. “That much we can count on. Our job is to defend her while she closes it.” 

Mike nodded. “Okay, let’s do it. What do we need to do?” 

“We’ll keep her here. We’ll reinforce the shed to withstand some blows and then lock her in. Nothing goes in.” Hopper moved to the table, where the map was. “I’m pretty sure that they’re going to come from the nest, which means swarms out from the south. That’s the front of the house, so we’ll build strike teams. Layers of defenses. Steve and Nancy will go out front. They’ll be our lookouts. They’ll take the brunt of the first attack and let us know when it starts. Jonathan, take Dustin and Lucas and go to the hunting store. Get as many bear traps as you can. Pick up as much ammo as you can, as well.” 

Hopper took out a credit card from his wallet and handed it over. Jonathan nodded, grabbing his keys and striding out the door, the two kids on his heels. 

“The kids,” Hopper continued, “will be helping in any way we need. They’ll be mostly in the house for the fighting, but will defend the shed as needed. Use the house as an ambush point. Use the guns to maim or slow down the dogs, but _don’t get close to them._ Got it?” The party nodded. “Good. Joyce and I will be defending the shed with Jonathan and Robin. It’s our job to make sure that the ‘dogs don’t get to El. Under no circumstances does a demodog breach that shed—not even _one._ We just have to keep them busy long enough for El to close the gate. After that happens, the ‘dogs should die and we should be good. But until then, nothing gets El. _Nothing.”_

Max could see the group nodding, digesting the plan that Hopper was laying out. She could see their faces as they transformed from worried to determined, the glint in Mike’s eyes that told her that he didn’t give a shit what Hop was saying; if he had to bare-handed wrestle one of those ‘dogs to keep El safe, he would. She could see Joyce straightening up, Steve’s jaw clenching, Robin fisting her hands. They were ready; they were going to fight until their last breath and nothing was going to stop that. 

It buoyed Max—pushing her up and sending adrenaline pumping through her veins until yeah, _yeah,_ she could do this. What had happened to Billy wouldn’t happen to anyone else. This time she could make sure of it. 

Hopper went out, taking El and Mike to get sheet metal from the junkyard. Will, Joyce, Robin, Steve, Nancy, and Max stayed behind to strip the shed and turn it into a suitable place for El to access the void in. They first packed the walls with sheets and bedding and anything that would absorb sound. 

“She needs it quiet,” Joyce explained, when Max made a confused face. “Anything outside of the white noise distracts her, makes it harder for her to access the void. We need to keep as much sound as we can out.” 

“Oh,” Max said, and then Robin deposited a staple gun in her hand and showed her how to secure the comforters to the walls. 

By the time Jonathan was back with traps and ammo, the shed had been packed with as much soft sound-absorbing materials as possible, and they had moved on to hammering wood over the window to reinforce it. 

“Woah,” Dustin said, walking in. 

“Steve, sweetie,” Joyce said. “Help Jonathan set up the traps, please.” 

Will and Dustin joined in on the work on the shed. Steve went with Jonathan and Nancy to scatter bear traps around the south woods, hoping to catch some demodogs in their teethed grip. Lucas started helping Joyce and Robin and Max. Hopper returned, pulling around the back of the house, and then Mike and El were lifting pieces of sheet metal to secure to the outside of the shed. 

Joyce went inside and heated up a massive plate of leftovers for El. 

“She needs her energy,” Robin said to Max, as they watched El scarf the plate. 

When the shed was ready—sheet metal on the outside, plywood over the windows, the walls cushioned and cushioned again with all the soft things in the house, including the couch cushions, and several radios placed inside so that the white noise would drown anything else out—the group headed inside. El was finishing up her food as Hopper and Joyce laid out all the guns on the table. There were shotguns and rifles, but most of them were handguns. 

Hopper asked, “do you all remember how to shoot?” and everyone nodded, Max included. The rest of the party had been taught by Hop after the second attack, because it had occurred to him that leaving the kids defenseless except for a teenager wielding a spiked bat had been a bad idea from the start. Neil had taught Max to shoot when they were in California. 

Hopper still went over the basics—how to eject the magazine and put a new one in, how to cock the gun and take off the safety, how to use a quick-reloader should they have a revolver. 

They had two shotguns—one Joyce would be using, but the other would be with Will, who was a surprisingly good shot. The one solitary rifle would be with Nancy, who would also have her revolver and a hammer. Steve would get a handgun and his bat. Jonathan would have another handgun and an axe. 

Dustin, Lucas, Max, and Mike would all be armed with hammers and have two handguns between them. Max got one, after she demonstrated her enviable aim on a tree out back, and Lucas the other. 

The other weapon the kids would have was hairspray. Steve had gone and raided his stash, Robin’s, and Nancy’s for all flammable products. He returned with twenty-plus bottles of hairspray, dry shampoo, and even mousse. 

“Mousse?” Nancy asked, raising her eyebrows. 

“Yeah,” Steve shrugged. ‘They can put little dollops on the ground and light them on fire. Make it hard for the demodogs to run freely.” 

Nancy sighed but didn’t protest, because Steve was sort of right; they didn’t have the luxury of turning down a weapon, no matter how far-fetched it was. 

Eventually, it was time for El to start. She put the plate on the counter and squared her shoulders. Mike hugged her, tight and scared and unyielding. She hugged him back, just as tight. 

“Come on, kid,” Hop said, looking like he was marching to a firing squad. He didn’t want El in that shed any more than Mike did, Max realized. 

Everyone else stayed in the house, giving El murmurs of encouragement and hugs as she walked by. They watched her and Hop go out to the shed, share one more tense, frantic embrace, and then Hop close the door and lock it with chains and a padlock. Then he came back into the house and said, “Everyone to your posts.” 

Steve and Nancy headed to the front of the house, out to the porch where they would play lookout. Everyone had one massive group text up on their phones, waiting for the alert that told them that demodogs were nearing. 

Jonathan, Joyce, Hop, and Robin crowded around the shed, each taking a side. Robin held a double-headed hammer in her hands, looking ready to cut a bitch. The party sat in the kitchen and Will’s room, both of which looked out over the shed. Max took a deep breath and settled herself. She was going to fight these fucking nightmares one more time. The horrible, irrational guilt that had eaten at her gut since Steve had connected the dots that afternoon was slowly fading away, like a reluctant child in the face of unwavering parents. Max would put it to rest, tonight. She might not be able save Billy anymore, but she would be able to save her friends, and that would have to be enough. 

“Mike,” Dustin hissed, poking his head out Will’s door. 

“What?” Mike snapped back. 

“I have an idea,” Dustin said. “Come here.” 

Mike stomped up from his chair, Max following. 

Dustin was grinning, holding an old wrist rocket. Mike squinted at it, a faint sneer on his face. “So?” 

“So,” Dustin said, “the mousse. Y’know, the stuff that Steve brought over. He said we could put little dollops on the ground, but I have a better idea.” 

“What kind of idea,” Max asked, warily. 

Dustin grinned. “Well, since Mike and I don’t have guns, we have to find something else that is projectile based. I think we should use this,” he brandished the wrist rocket. 

Max gave him a _what the fuck do you mean_ look. 

Dustin sighed. He picked up a ream of Will’s paper—probably used for drawing—and waved it in front of their faces. “The mousse is flammable, and so is this. We could make mini flaming catapult payloads.” 

“How?” Mike looked distrustful. 

“Easy,” Dustin said. “All we do is—” He mimed putting a plop of mousse on the paper and then wrapping it up. Then he put that in the wrist rocket and said, “then we light it on fire and shoot the demodogs.” 

Max frowned. “You’d have to wear gloves.” 

“Or we could use Mrs. Byers’ tongs,” Dustin said. 

They hurried back to the kitchen, footsteps loud on the floor, where they stole a small pair of tongs used for flipping cooking meat. Dustin held them up, gestured to the hands. “All we need to do,” he said, beginning to grin, “is bend these in, and then we’re golden.” 

Max caught Mike’s smirk spreading across his face.

* * *

Steve swung the bat again, just to move. A restless energy wormed its way into his muscles, squirming in his stomach and beating his heart loud and hard. Nancy stood off to the side, watching him. They had moved the cars from the front of the house to the far side so that they were less likely to get destroyed. The lot was empty now, the run of the driveway extending out to the road. The woods bordered either side, and Steve thought he could just barely make out the faint gleam of a bear trap, lying in wait for a demodog leg to clamp around. 

“Steve,” Nancy said, “what’s wrong?” 

He huffed. “What do you mean, what’s wrong? We’re about to be besieged by murderous aliens; nothing’s wrong.” 

She sighed, and put a hand on his where it gripped the bat. He stilled, not even realizing he had been minutely twitching his wrist. “It’s more than that,” she said. 

Steve looked away from her heavy gaze. “Hopper filled you in on the lab in San Diego, right?” 

She nodded. He folded his lips in, licked them, shifted his weight and glanced back and then away again. “Well, the odds are that Billy didn’t drown. That the, uh, the lab faked his death the same way they did Will’s.” 

She gasped in, her eyes turning down and filling with sadness. “Oh, Steve,” she said. “I’m so sorry.” 

“The one person that I thought was protected from all—_this_—died cold and alone and mostly likely torn apart because some government fucks decided to mess around with something they didn’t understand,” Steve’s voice trembled with rage. “They took my best friend from me, and I didn’t even _know._ I could have helped him, Nancy,” Steve met her eyes then, feeling the helplessness bleed out of them, “I knew about the Upside Down. I was probably the only person who could have helped, and I didn’t even know.” He threw out a hand, waving it and then dragging it through his hair, feeling the tug on his roots and relishing the pain, “I didn’t know and now it’s too _late,_ and Max thinks it’s her fault but she’s wrong; it’s _mine. My fault.”_

_Mea culpa,_ Billy would’ve said. 

Nancy sighed, taking his hand and holding it in both of hers. “No, Steve, it wasn’t your fault either. You know that.” She tilted her head at him, eyes looking too well, too far into him. “You do this all the time, Steve. You’re so incredibly compassionate. You take everyone’s problems onto your shoulders and try to make them better because you can’t stand their pain, but you’re only human. It’s not your fault, it’s theirs; it’s the lab’s fault who pushed some poor child into ripping open the fabric of our reality. Just like Will going missing was Brenner’s fault. Steve, look at me,” Nancy put one hand on his face and guided his eyes to hers, “it’s _not your fault,_ and you will not let it crush you.” 

Steve studied her face, so familiar and beloved. Once, it had been the center of his days, the sun rising and setting, the blood in his veins and the beating of his heart. But now, it was just the face of a member of his ragtag little family, of someone who knew him so well that she could tell him his thought process before it even happened. 

“Okay,” he said. “Okay.” 

“Good,” she turned away, dropping her hand and picking up her rifle from the ground. “’Cause we got a battle to fight.” 

Distant shrieks sounded and both of them stood straighter. Nancy cocked the rifle and aimed it towards the woods, backing up the porch steps. Steve went down and to the side, out of her range. She would start shooting as soon as ‘dogs breached the trees, but Steve would wait until they went for the side of the house, where he would intercept them. Then he would hit and hit and hit until there were none left. 

_Nothing gets to El. Nothing._

They heard the demodogs spring the first bear trap when an ear-shredding howl sounded. Steve dug out his phone and typed, _first trap sprung. Attack starts now._ He stuffed it back in his pocket and straightened, training his eyes on the trees as anticipation climbed up his throat. 

The world seemed to hold its breath for a moment, sucking in, trees stilling and wind ceasing and the swaying of the grass stopping. Then the first demodog appeared and the adrenaline hit, sharpening Steve’s gaze until he could see the gleam of slime on its body. 

Nancy shot, the dry crack of the rifle echoing. It was a perfect chest hit; the ‘dog went down like thunder and the next was already leaping over it. Nancy cocked and fired again. Hopper had been right. It was a full _swarm,_ Steve thought wildly, as ten, _twenty_ appeared along the tree line and charged. 

Steve crouched a bit, digging the ball of his foot into the dirt and twisting, like he was lining up at home plate. He placed the bat over one shoulder and spotted, watching the ‘dog hurtling for him. He swung, catching it right in the head. He didn’t even pause to make sure it was dead, only wheeled and hit again, losing himself in the bloodlust as it coursed through him. Nothing would reach El. He would make sure of it. 

He pushed himself harder, the distant sound of rifle shots in his ears, as he killed as many demodogs as he could. They were swarming him, nipping at his ankles and knees, clawing at his arms, biting and screaming, but Steve didn’t let them through. He let out a battle cry and punched through one’s abdomen and snapped the next’s back legs. Punched another with the butt of the bat and the stabbed a third with the nail on top. Each swing was efficient, connecting to alien muscle, ‘cause he could afford nothing else. 

He cried out as he felt something rip through his back leg. He twisted, braining a demodog, and looked. The wound pulsed with sluggish blood, low on his right thigh. _Fuck,_ he did not have time for an injury right now. Steve turned back, delivering another blow to a ‘dog that had tried to leap past him, and then stumbled as he tried to put weight on it. He went down to one leg. 

_No,_ he thought. _This can’t be happening. I need to fight, I need to_—a ‘dog rushed at him, teeth coming right for his face, and he swept up the bat. Steve tried to struggle back up to his feet but he was losing too much blood. All he succeeded in doing was falling, shoulder first. 

“Steve!” He heard Nancy’s cry, the answering gunshot, but couldn’t respond because there were already two more demodogs going for his throat and belly, mouths open and claws ready to gut him. 

Then—the furious roar of an engine, the spray of gravel and two consecutive _booms;_ the spray of buckshot and the shrieks as the ‘dogs were blown away from him. 

“Steve!” The voice was masculine, deep and familiar, and Steve wanted to cry because if he was hearing _that_ voice, that meant he was dying and he couldn’t die yet— 

A face peered over him, beautiful and gold and pinched with worry. 

“No,” Billy whispered. “No. Get up, Steve, you have to get up. You’re not dying on me today, Harrington.” His hands—strong and rough and sure—brushed along Steve’s leg. He whimpered, trying to tell Billy that it _hurt, don’t touch that,_ but Billy seemed to get the message because his hands were already tying something around his leg and then, “Come on, pretty boy. Get the fuck up, we have places to go.” 

Billy hoisted Steve onto one shoulder, wrapping Steve’s arm around his neck and then bodily hauling him up the porch. “Cover us,” he barked at Nancy, and then he was through the door, dropping Steve on the ground around a gamut of curses flying from his mouth. Billy turned, a hurricane of furious movement, and slammed back onto the porch, where more dogs had gathered. 

Steve gasped, hands reaching out for him, trying to push himself back up and to his feet, trying to follow Billy because there was no way that Steve was letting him fight off a whole swarm of demodogs without him. 

“Steve!” Dustin cried, sprinting into the room. “Son of a bitch, what happened?” 

Steve gasped, “No, Billy—I have to get to Billy; get me up, Dustin, I have to go back—” 

“Steve,” Dustin said, his voice filled with something like dread, “Billy’s dead. You’re hurt, you need help. Let us _help you.”_

Steve was distantly aware of Max, of Mike and Lucas and Will, crowding around him. Voices streamed over his head as his vision went blurry, as colors faded out and darkness rushed in. 

“Billy,” Steve gasped, and then it all went dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I recognize that the Byers house doesn't really have a _porch,_ per se, but I made it have one in this fic because that's what my mind was picturing. Just bare with me. Also, I actually don't know which direction the house faces, so I'm going with south and sticking to that. And I'm not _sure_ that there are really woods bordering the Byers house, I just had them there because it's convenient. Seriously, there's so much fanon when it comes to settings here, guys.


	18. Stronger by Far

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for violence and some very _minor_ self-harm.   
The title is from Edgar Allen Poe's _Annabel Lee._  
unbetaed and follow me on tumblr @withoutmonsters

_Hurry,_ the voice snapped to Billy, pressing the need to go faster into his mind. It had been directing him since he’d got to Indiana, twitching his hands when he had to turn, running information through his head so fast he almost missed it all. 

The rest of the drive had been a grueling 16-hour haul, through the early parts of the morning and all the way through the day. The sun was setting, spilling pink and orange like paint across the sky as Billy sped past miles of woods and farms. 

A girl—Eleven—could shut the portal allowing those dog-things into this world down. She could close it, could defeat this evil once and for all. She was south of Hawkins, shut up in a house on the outskirts of the town. Billy had turned the Camaro that way as soon as he’d hit county lines, gunning the engine. 

About fifty yards away, the voice had shrieked alarm through his mind, causing him to tense and up and swear. 

_“Fuck!_ What—what is it?” 

_Attack—attack—Steve—injured hurry hurry HURRY!_

And Billy went frantic, ‘cause he’d never heard the voice sound so incoherent before. His foot mashed the pedal and he skidded into a clearing, the back end of the Camaro fishtailing, running over several dog-things in the process. Throwing open the door, the voice directed his focus to a knot of dogs by the side of the house, crouching over someone on the ground. 

Billy moved without thinking, grabbing the shotgun and firing _boom boom_ and the dogs were off and the axe was in his hands and he was cutting at them until nothing but black guts were left. Billy crouched down over Steve, who was blinking, eyes glassy. 

“No,” Billy whispered. _No._ He would not just manage to reunite with Steve—see him face-to-face for the first time in eight years—just to watch him die. _Not today, motherfucker,_ he thought, hands scrabbling at his jeans and frantically tying his belt around Steve’s leg as a tourniquet. He was dimly aware that he was saying something else, that his mouth was moving, but the words didn’t register. Billy gripped his shoulders and pulled him up. Steve went limply, his head lolling on his neck. Billy grabbed one of his arms and wrapped it around his neck and then started a stumbling gate onto the porch. A girl—dimly, he thought it might be Nancy Wheeler, Steve’s ex-girlfriend—was standing on the porch, a rifle off to the side and a revolver in her hands, still killing dog-things. “Cover us,” Billy snapped at her, and dove through the front door of the house. 

He checked Steve’s pulse, which was elevated but steady. 

_Go fight,_ the voice urged him. _Steve will live._

So that’s what Billy did, slamming back through the door and onto the porch, dodging a ‘dog going right for him and then scooping up his gun. He reached his axe and traded it out. Then he cut and cut and cut and kept cutting, losing himself in the feeling of letting go, fury darkening his vision and a shaky panic guiding his movements. Black ichor-y blood flew around him, splattering the ground and his boots and his jacket. The axe handle began to get slippery. A knot of three demodogs dove for him, legs working like well-oiled machines, maws open and claws out. Billy tightened his grip, girding his resolve, and then slashed through the first.

* * *

The door to the house slammed open and Dustin peeked into the hallway from Will’s room. Will was at his window, which was open, firing out of it with a determined gusto. Max had been at the window with him, watching as demodogs swarmed around the house and made for the shed. Max had gotten her own gun ready, scared that she wasn’t going to be able to hit such fast-moving objects, when Dustin cried, “Son of a bitch!” from the living room. Max exchanged a look with Will and ran past Mike, who was still setting up their fiery wrist rocket. Max’s heart slammed into her throat when she spied what was happening in the living room. Steve was on the floor, blood drenching one pant leg, Dustin hovering over him. 

Max sprinted into the room, Mike and Will hot on her tail. Lucas came in from the kitchen, just in time for Steve to gasp faintly, “Billy,” before his head hit the floor, eyelids fluttering shut. 

Bewildered dread hit Max and she looked at Dustin. 

“He just started saying something about Billy,” Dustin said, panic mounting in his voice. “He’s hurt, we have to help him.” 

Lucas was pushing past Max to crouch over Steve’s leg, movements sure. “This is a tourniquet.” He said, “it’s supposed to stop blood from flowing so someone doesn’t bleed out.” 

Will scrambled up. “I’ll get the first-aid kit,” and then he was down the hall. 

“Who’s _that?”_ Mike asked, from the window. Max frowned, standing up and joining him. 

A shape was moving over to the side of the house, where Steve was supposed to have been. It was endlessly familiar—bulky and strong, golden hair tucked into a bun on the back of his head. He held an axe, his bomber jacket half-zipped, boots crushing the chest of a demodog while he cut off the head of another one. 

Vertigo hit her. Max staggered back, eyes burning and mouth open. “Billy,” she said faintly. “That’s Billy.” 

Mike drew back, nose scrunching up. “What? But he’s—” 

“Dead,” Max said, and flew out the door. “Billy!” She screamed, body hitting the porch railing and nearly going over. 

His head snapped up, eyes widening. “Max!” he cried back, “You _moron!_ Get back in the house! NOW, shitbird!” 

Max ignored him, turning to dart down the steps, when a shape sprang at him from behind, a dark blur of flower-petal teeth and long claws. Another cry flew from her lips, ripped away by the sounds of the battle, and Billy twisted, face set in a grimace and then the world slowed. 

The demodogs hung in the air, shrieks and howls dying away until everything was still. Max heard Nancy swear behind her, but she was too busy looking at Billy, who jerked, and then something—black and ethereal and airborne—flew out of him and floated, each little particle black like gunpowder and glinting like diamonds. The demodog latched onto Billy’s back was ripped away, body flying, and then _all_ the demodogs went limp, collapsing where they had frozen. 

“What the fuck?” Nancy whispered. 

Max dashed down the steps, her legs pumping, and crossed the meager space in a second. She dropped beside Billy, who had fallen, the black cloud nowhere to be found. His eyelids fluttered, his face covered in a thin sheen of sweat. 

“Billy,” she gasped. “Billy, Billy, can you hear me? Billy? Wake up!” She shook his shoulders, her hands roving along his chest for an injury, blood, anything that would explain his spontaneous passing out. 

“Max,” Nancy was beside her, “Max, what is going on?” 

“Help me,” Max gasped. “He’s—he’s hurt. He has to be. We need to get him in the house.” She tugged ineffectually at Billy’s shoulders. 

A shape loomed over them, and then Hopper’s voice, “What the _fuck?_ That is not Steve; where is _Steve?”_

“Inside,” Nancy said offhandedly. “Hop, help us. We need to get him in the house.” 

Hopper stared at them with incomprehension in his eyes and Max begged, _“Hopper,”_ and then he was leaning down, slinging Billy over his shoulder, and marching towards the porch. Max followed doggedly, not letting more than a foot get between her and her brother.

* * *

“Jesus,” Hopper muttered, scrubbing his hands over his face. Max shifted, her hand going to smooth over Billy’s hair. It was the third time in the last five minutes she’d done that, but Hopper couldn’t blame her. Her brother had just miraculously come back from the dead; if Hop was in her place, he would have done the same. 

Her story had been rather unbelievable (and a little worrisome, if he was honest) when she had answered Hop’s demand to _explain._ She had told him and the party about how Billy had gotten attacked, how the world had frozen and then all the ‘dogs went limp. About the black cloud that had surrounded him. It sounded absolutely crazy, like, too-crazy-even-for-Hawkins, but Nancy had backed her up. Hopper had caught Lucas and Dustin exchanging looks when she’d mentioned the cloud, but no one had the heart to tell Max her brother was potentially possessed by the Mindflayer. 

Billy was laying on the larger of the couches in the Byers living room, out cold. He had been near-feverish when Hop had put him down, his eyes darting behind his lids, head jerking on the arm occasionally. Max stayed glued to him, sitting on the very edge and looking like hell would freeze over before anyone managed to pull her away. 

Steve was in Jonathan’s room, Joyce with him, sewing up that nasty gash on his leg. She had taken one look at it and sucked in a breath. “It got his artery, that’s why there’s so much blood. If this tourniquet wasn’t here, he’d been dead.” 

“Billy put that on him,” Max said faintly. 

Joyce shot her a concerned look, but had only concentrated on cutting away Steve’s pants and attending to his wound. 

“Max,” Nancy started, “maybe you should—” 

“No,” Max said. “I’m staying right here.” 

Nancy frowned. Hopper stood from his chair and jerked his head at her and they walked into Will’s room. Hop shut the door firmly behind her and hissed, “How are we going to tell her that the Mindflayer’s possessed Billy?” 

Nancy looked uncertain. “I don’t know, Hop, something’s different.” 

“You said that it was a _black cloud,_ Nancy. Like what came out of Will last year.” 

“Yes and no,” Nancy said, looking troubled. 

“Yes and no?” Hopper demanded. “What does that mean?” 

She shifted, hands coming up to grip her elbows. “I don’t know, Hop. It was just…different. It didn’t…look like what I remember. The Mindflayer looked like…I don’t know. Like snakes, or something. It twisted and turned in…streams, almost.” Her face was pinched. “It’s hard to explain. Anyway, the Mindflayer was a dull black. Like really _really_ small beetles, all flying in tandem. This was, I don’t know, closer to black glitter.” 

Hopper raised his eyebrows. “Black _glitter?”_

“Yeah. It glinted in the sun. And it hung around Billy almost…protectively. Like it was wrapping him up. And it killed that demodog—in fact, I’m pretty sure it killed _all_ of those demodogs. I don’t see what else could have happened.” 

El was still shut up in the shed, which was guarded by Robin and Jonathan at the moment, trying to close the gate. 

Hopper sighed and looked at her. Nancy looked tired—exhaustion and fear tugging at her shoulders and dragging her down. She wiped her eye with a hand, slumped. 

“So you’re saying Billy Hargrove is not possessed by the Mindflayer?” 

She nodded. “Yeah, I think so.” 

Hop nodded. His instinct was telling him that she was wrong—that the Mindflayer was tricky and that it was a lot more likely to be him than some mysterious force that had saved all of them, but she was right: why would the Mindflayer help defend them against his own demodogs? Both she and Max had seen Billy cutting at demodogs; had seen them collapse and stay down. There must be an explanation that made sense of all of this, he just hadn’t heard it yet. 

“I’m going to help Jonathan and Robin,” she said. 

“Okay, kid,” Hop said, and guided open the door. He watched her thin shoulders disappear around the corner, and then turned his gaze to Max. She sat still, perched on the coffee table now, elbows braced on her knees. She looked small. 

The first time Hop had seen her, she had looked bigger than she actually was. She had snipped at him with all the sarcasm she could muster, putting on a front, joking with Lucas and Steve. Her energy had seemed endless—to fight, to shout, to rage and scream and mourn. But she was so clearly fragile in that moment that all Hop wanted to do was gather her up in a big hug. He had a feeling that she wouldn’t appreciate that, so he restrained himself. Dustin and Lucas were hovering by her, having a mostly silent conversation. 

Hopper turned his head as Joyce walked out of Jonathan’s room. 

“Hey,” he said. “How is he?” 

She shrugged a shoulder. “Better than I expected. He was still out cold when I stitched him up, so that’s good. I left some painkillers and a glass of water by his bed for when he wakes up.” 

“Dustin is going to want to see him.” 

Joyce shot Hop a look. “I know. But he shouldn’t. Steve needs rest, and I don’t exactly have meds to sedate him. It’s better let him sleep for as long as possible.” 

Hopper nodded, glad that Steve was going to be okay. He didn’t like pushing the barely-adult boy into so much responsibility. If Hopper had his choice, it would only be him who went out to fight demodogs. But that wasn’t possible, and choosing between which children to put in more danger had been, in short, agonizing. He was glad that no kids had died because of him, tonight. 

Joyce went into the kitchen, turning on the tap. Hopper returned to the living room to wait out a silent vigil with Max. It would be a few hours, yet.

* * *

_Billy._

The voice mentally prodded at him. Billy felt his consciousness bleed in, throwing up flashes of what happened. 

What? 

_Billy, you need to wake up. More will be coming, soon._

Suddenly, he was more awake. What happened? 

_I killed them. I killed all of them._

It obviously could tell he was confused, because it supplied him a deluge of images: the dog-thing attacking, the world going still, Max’s terrified face. 

_I killed them all._

Indeed, you did, he thought to it, before blinking his eyes open and sitting up. 

“Billy!” Max’s voice, teary and wavering, gasped before suddenly, his arms were full of his sister. She clutched him awkwardly, her head contorted to the side so that hands could wrap tightly around him, but she didn’t seem to care, holding onto him with the kind of desperation that you only saw when someone had been about to die. He gripped her tightly back, burying his face in her hair. God, was it good to see her. 

He was dimly aware of voices talking, of shapes shifting in his periphery, but he didn’t care yet. Max was safe; nothing else mattered for now. Then more memories of the night filtered in and he went tense. 

“Max,” he said, drawing back. “What about Steve? Where is he? Is he okay?” 

She looked up at him, giving him a quivery smile. “Yeah, he’s fine. Got a bad cut on his leg but Joyce fixed him up.” 

Relief washed through him and he slumped slightly. “I want to see him.” 

“He’s sleeping,” a voice said from his left. It was Maybe-Nancy. 

Billy looked her square in the face, “Does it look like I give a shit?” 

Her lips pursed and she glared at him. A large man who was sitting on the couch straightened up. 

“He’s hurt,” Maybe-Nancy snapped. “He needs rest.” 

“I’m not gonna bother ‘im,” Billy muttered. “I just want to see him.” 

“Here,” Max said, getting up. 

She led him through a hallway. It was dark and slightly dingy, a dent in the wall where someone had probably kicked it. The wallpaper was old, slightly faded in some places. It almost looked, Billy thought, squinting at it as he went past, like someone had ripped a piece of tape off and taken some of the pattern with it. Max stopped at a door, expression sort of expectant. 

Twisting the knob, Billy saw that Steve was indeed sleeping, breathing even and deep. He strode into the room and placed one hand on the mattress, leaning over Steve so he could press two fingers to the carotid on his neck. His pulse beat slow and steady. Billy nodded, thinking, _good,_ and then took a moment to study Steve’s face. It was calm in sleep, relaxed and blank. There were dark bags under his eyes and he looked pale, skin sallow in the dimness of the room. His leg was elevated and bound, resting on an ice pack. Billy frowned and turned back to the door, where several people had gathered: Max, Maybe-Nancy, the large man, and a small woman with piercing eyes. 

“Why is there an ice pack on it?” 

Maybe-Nancy stared at him. “Um, because it reduces blood flow? He just got cut, we want to _stop_ the bleeding.” 

Billy snorted, “You use pressure to stop bleeding, princess. Ice on an open wound can infect it, and ice on a stitched wound keeps blood away that can help start healing it. How long has it been on?” 

“A few hours,” the woman offered. 

“Then take it off.” 

Maybe-Nancy made a noise, “Why should we do what _you_ say?” 

Billy didn’t even say it twice; he just turned, lifted up the leg, grabbed the ice pack, and put it back down so swiftly that Steve didn’t even stir. Billy turned back to the door and threw the ice pack onto the floor, meeting her eyes. She was half-gaping, looking like she couldn’t believe what he had done. 

The woman sighed, “It looks like we have a lot to discuss. Why don’t we chat in the living room?” 

Billy glanced at Steve one more time; his pulse was steady and breathing deep. _He doesn’t look like he’s in any distress,_ Billy thought. He glanced back at the door, to Max, who nodded at him. 

“Alright,” he allowed. “Lead the way.” 

The woman headed down the hallway, with the large man on her heels. Max waited until Billy was at the door, then reached out and grabbed his hand. Normally, he would give her shit for that, but given recent events, he, too, felt the need for constant connection. Maybe-Nancy stayed in the doorway, glaring daggers as Billy walked by. She went into the room just as he left. Billy scoffed. 

In the living room, the woman hovered. “Would you like something to drink? Something to eat?” She offered. 

Billy was about to answer when the man interrupted. “Joyce,” he said. “Let’s just get this over with.” 

Apprehension came over Billy. “Get what over with?” 

Max had straightened up. “Yeah, get _what_ over with?” 

The man turned to Billy, opening his mouth. His face was set in tired lines, Billy thought, as if he’d seen too much shit and didn’t want to see more. 

“Hopper,” Joyce said. “Think about what Nancy said.” 

_Aha,_ Billy thought. _I was right about the name._

Just then, Nancy walked back into the room, holding the ice pack in one hand, her phone in the other. “What did I say?” 

Joyce cast her a look, and then one back to Hopper. Max made a noise like an angry cat. “Okay, chucklefucks,” she snapped. 

“Language,” Hopper said, but Max ignored him. 

“My brother just came back from the dead and saved all our asses by killing over twenty demodogs. That is more than all of you could ever _hope_ for, so why the fuck are you acting like he’s some shady criminal?” Max stood with her legs spread, arms crossed. Billy was impressed; she was standing with her chin up, like royalty. Her eyes were directly on Hopper, gaze fierce and angry. Billy liked that she was standing up for him, even if he never would have admitted it. He assumed a ‘demodog’ was a dog-thing. 

Hopper sighed. “Max…” 

Faces peaked around the corner to another room, drawn by Max’s raised voice. They were male, young, about Max’s age. 

“Max,” one of them said. He was tall, black, with jeans on and a handgun tucked into his waistband. “Last year, when Will got possessed, the Mindflayer was super convincing. We didn’t realize that it was controlling Will until the last minute.” 

“You think my brother is _possessed?”_ Max snarled. 

_They mean me,_ the voice put in. _They think I’m the Mindflayer._

It sensed Billy’s confusion about what the Mindflayer was and quickly pressed the knowledge into his mind. He digested the information as the rest of the people argued back and forth. 

“We’re not going to hurt him,” Hopper said, in a voice that was very clearly trying to be calm, but was really just irritated. 

“He’s not the Mindflayer!” Max shouted back. 

Another boy started talking, but Billy was contemplating something else. 

What would it take to prove to them I’m not the Mindflayer? 

_Heat. The shadow monster hates heat. They got it out of Will by heating Hopper’s cabin until it couldn’t stand it anymore._ Images flashed in his mind: a cabin, a tripwire, space heaters all crowded around a bed, a blazing fire, and a small-faced kid tied down, screaming, screaming, screaming. Black tendrils streaming out of him, dark and powdered and malevolent; Joyce screaming, _get out of my son!_

Billy took in their faces. Joyce looked worried but firm, Hopper annoyed and impatient. The kids all had the same expressions on their faces: sorry, but not as though they were sorry for whatever they wanted to do, but sorry that Max was arguing with them. They weren’t going to budge on this, Billy realized. 

Billy moved from behind her, the group still too busy fighting to register that the person they were supposed to be keeping an eye on was leaving. Billy walked through the doorway into the kitchen, past the four boys. One of them was watching him, eyes wide and skin pale. 

_Will,_ Billy thought, connecting his face to the screaming boy’s. 

Billy went over to the stove and moved one of the grates. He flicked on the burner and watched the blue flame. Then he stuck his hand over it. 

“Billy!” It was Max. She looked taken aback. “What are you doing?” 

Billy raised an eyebrow. “That thing hates heat, right? So if I burn myself, that means I’m not possessed.” 

Max hissed and stormed over to him, grabbing his wrist. He jerked his hand back over the flame and held it there, resisting her grip. Billy met Hopper’s eyes and held them. 

“Okay, kid, we get it,” he said. 

Billy just pressed his hand closer. 

“Billy!” Max begged. 

“That’s enough!” It was Joyce. Her voice startled him; it wasn’t the tremulous, worried voice that had tried to ease him into the conversation earlier—it was firm, sharp, authoritative; distinctly maternal. She stormed over to the stove and flicked the burner off, staring up at Billy with penetrating eyes. He gave her a silent sneer. 

“You didn’t have to do that,” she said softly. 

“Yes, I did,” Billy snapped. “I’m not staying in some shithole where everyone thinks I’m a monster. And if that’s how this is going to go, I’ll take Steve and Max and leave right now.” 

“No, you won’t,” Nancy said, crossing her arms and meeting Billy glare-for-glare. “Steve’s hurt. He needs to rest.” 

Billy curled his lip at her. “Oh, he can rest plenty in the car.” 

“Billy,” Max said quietly. 

“What?” He snapped, turning to her. “Why do you keep saying my name, shitbird?” 

“Because you’re being a dumbass!” Max shouted. 

_Billy,_ the voice said, cutting through all noise around him. _There are more coming._

“Mother_fucker,”_ he snarled, pushing past Max and the boys and through the living room. He slammed through the front door and off the porch, turning to the south. The trees swayed slightly in the cool breeze, which skated along his overheated skin. He watched the tree line, as if more demodogs would come streaming out at any moment. 

“How far out?” 

_A few miles. But they’re closing fast._

Billy swore again, turning back to the porch. The total number of people in the house save Steve had spilled out the door: the four boys, Hopper, Joyce, Nancy, and Max, looking pinched and worried. 

“What’s going on?” she asked. 

“You want to know what’s in me?” Billy growled. “You want to know why the _Mindflayer_ didn’t get me?” He spread his arms wide, feeling the pull of tired muscles. He was breathing hard, adrenaline and anger sharpening the world to a pin-point quality. He felt out of control, like the thoughts in his head were running out of his mouth; like he was drunk off all his rage and worry and pain. He felt like a wire pulled taught, about to snap. He cackled, long and high, watching Max’s eyes go wide, the boys edge back. Hopper stepped in front of Joyce, pushing Nancy back. 

His skin tingled and pricked, and then something black began rising out of it. It looked like chips of onyx stone, miniscule but infinite in number. It swirled up and together, a hulking shadow against the night sky, looming over the house. 

“What the fuck,” Hopper breathed out. 

Billy knew what they saw: the vague shape of a torso, with two bright slits for eyes. Billy was seeing double, one perspective from his own height, the porch slightly raised, the people on it scared and confused; the other perspective from much higher, some of the taller faces partially obscured by the overhang of the house. 

When the voice spoke, it was a booming noise, deep but high, sounding a little like the wind shrieking through the trees on a dark night. 

_“Fools,”_ it jeered, _“the_ creature _you call the Mindflayer is as different from me as a fly is to an eagle. Do not try to compare us.”_

“Ok_ay,”_ Nancy said, stumbling past Hopper’s arm and down the steps. _“What_ is going on. What _are_ you? What—what—the hell is this?” 

“Call it an experiment gone wrong,” Billy snapped. 

Max sucked in a breath, her head snapping up. “The lab,” she said. “In San Diego. I was right! They _did_ figure out how to give people powers.” 

_“Powers,”_ it rumbled, _“sure, powers.”_

“Okay,” Hopper said, “I don’t give a shit about what we call it, as long as you put that thing away.” He was addressing Billy, which was probably a bad idea, but the voice didn’t seem to care. It just shrunk down, raveling back up and spooling into Billy again. Now that had been outside of him, he could feel where it was inside, too. 

It felt like a hole, pulsing right next to his heart. It didn’t feel bad, just…empty, until the voice reclaimed its place. Then it settled, and Billy could barely feel it. 

He slumped. Already, Billy felt drained. Like the voice had ripped out all of his drive, his anger, his fury—the emotions that normally kept him going—and now all that was left was a tired sort of fear. 

“We should go inside,” he said. “There are more coming, and we have to get ready.” 

Joyce looked at him. “There are more? How do you know?” 

Billy waved a hand in the direction the voice had been. “That thing knows. It just tells me.” 

“Oh.” 

No one seemed to know what to say to that, so Billy walked forward. They gave him plenty of room, except Max, who just regarded him with worry creasing her brow. 

He thought she was going to ask about the voice, but all she said was, “Do you know how many demodogs?” 

_Many,_ the voice supplied. 

“Many,” Billy said flatly. 

“Coming from where?” Hopper asked. Strangely enough, he wasn’t looking at Billy as if he was a freak. Billy wondered why. 

The voice produced flashes of directions and he answered, “The south, and west. They’re coming in an arc. I think they’re just going to try to hit everywhere at once.” 

“Well, can you do that thing again? Where you killed all of them?” Nancy asked. 

Billy looked at her. _“I_ didn’t do that. The voice did that; I had absolutely no choice in it.” 

“The voice?” 

“Yeah,” Billy said. “That’s what I call it, since it’s a literal voice in my head.” 

“So you can’t control it,” one of the boys jumped in. 

Billy regarded him with faint disdain, “No, I can’t control it.” 

“Well, that’s not helpful,” the boy muttered, and Billy snapped, “Hey, watch it shithead.” 

Hopper said—wearily—"Language,” while the other kids jumped to the boy’s defense. Billy was already tired of these people. 

* * *

Billy had been right: there were more demodogs. Nancy and Jonathan had gone out and pulled all the demodogs from the traps, resetting the ones they could, but…it wasn’t enough. Thanks to Billy’s warning, they had some time to prepare. They took up their posts again: Hopper, Joyce, Robin, and Jonathan protecting the shed; the kids in the house acting as ambush fighters, and Nancy out front with the rifle. Billy would take Steve’s place and join her on the porch. 

He moved the Camaro to be safe with the other cars, retrieving his shotgun in the process. Nancy eyed it as she reloaded. 

“You any good?” 

“Why you asking?” Billy leered. 

Nancy snorted, “You know, Steve’s been in love with you for like, ever.” 

Billy fumbled the shell. “You’re lying.” His voice could have frozen boiling water. 

Nancy slammed the rifle down. “No, I’m not.” 

“Oh really, princess? So Steve ‘playboy’ Harrington suddenly has a crush on me? That’s rich.” 

“Steve’s not a playboy,” Nancy said, as if she knew him so much better than Billy did. “And he shows his love for people through having time for them. That’s how you know he cares about you—because he’ll always be there, no matter how much it hurts him. His whole love language is made up of paying attention, Billy. And he’s done nothing but focus on you since freshman year.” Nancy picked up her rifle and stormed onto the porch. 

_A lot longer than that,_ Billy thought. _But that doesn’t mean that he’s in love with me, just that he loves me. It’s different._

“She’s right, you know,” a soft voice said from the doorway, 

Billy spun around to see Robin. She had been friends with Steve since his sophomore year; she frequently turned up in his Snaps. Billy grit his teeth and opened his mouth to deny that Steve—the boy he’d loved longer than he could remember—actually loved him back. The idea was preposterous: Billy was a fuck up; he didn’t deserve Steve. 

Robin didn’t even give him a chance to speak. “You’re all he ever talks about. Our first ever conversation was about his best friend in Cali who could play the piano. It’s a universally known fact: you make friends with Steve Harrington, you get Billy Hargrove, too. And frankly,” she gave a little laugh, “I couldn’t even be mad, either. He just so plainly adores you.” 

Billy looked away, feeling his cheeks heat. “Yeah, but he’s like that with everyone.” 

“No, he’s not,” Robin said softly. “And you know that.” 

In the end, the battle was short and dirty. Billy joined Nancy on the porch, just as the first demodogs were encountering the bear traps. They aimed at the trees and started shooting when the first sleek shine of muscle in the moonlight broke through. The gun spat thunder in his hands, spraying deadly shot over the monsters. 

“I’m out,” Nancy said, tossing the rifle aside. 

Since Billy was more help with his axe, he had given her his pistol. She dual-wielded the guns, like some cowboy out of an old western as Billy dove off the porch. 

His feet hit the dirt and three demodogs rushed him, chittering with delight. 

The voice watched his back, giving him flashes of where the demodogs were going to be, where to hit to kill them in one blow, how to twist his body to avoid getting tackled. Billy ducked a claw and rammed the butt of the axe into a torso. He swung and chopped off a leg and then yelped as another dog latched itself onto his leg. He cleaved the head in half before it could do much damage. 

The outside of the house was soon overrun, demodogs swarming up the porch steps and around the side. He watched Nancy pull her hammer from her belt and brain a ‘dog. He gritted his teeth and killed another, trying to wade closer to help. Then he felt the world slow, the ‘dogs moving in half time. 

_Billy,_ the voice murmured in his head. 

What? He snarled, chopping a demodog’s head off with one solid blow. 

_Thank you,_ it said. 

Billy frowned, paused. The world was completely still, now, the demodogs looking like wax statues in the moonlight, maws gaping and claws extended. Billy killed another. 

For what? 

The voice didn’t answer. Billy realized that he couldn’t feel it anymore, and groped around in his chest for that filled feeling. He stumbled a bit—he couldn’t find it. All that was left was the lingering imprint of some alien emotion. Fear? Yes, it was fear. Billy stumbled again, eyes wide. All around him, the remaining demodogs went limp.


	19. Those Who Were Older

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is from Edgar Allen Poe's _Annabel Lee._  
TW: gore  
I might post another chapter later today or tomorrow since this is a short one.

Eleven was tired. The shed had gotten colder as the night had progressed, and she felt it with a strange sort of detachment: she _could_ feel the physical world when she was in the void, but she could also feel sensation in the void, leading to a weird double sensation. 

The void itself was also freezing. Just like she’d told Mike and the party: the gate was spilling cold, like dry ice drifting along a table. She could feel it along her power, stabbing and prickling. She could also feel the Mindflayer’s anger. And boy, was he angry. His rage rolled over her in waves, battering over her defenses in constant exhausting rotations. 

El had a vague sense of time, that it was passing, that something was supposed to be happening, but she couldn’t pay attention to it now. The gate was being frustratingly ghostly, moving through the grip of her power as if it was just fog. Finding had been easy; it was a roaring, bright presence, drawing her in and repelling her at the same time. It glowed through the void, glinting off the inch of water at her feet. But closing it? That was a different matter entirely. When she had closed her gate, she had felt each individual liminal thread that had been torn open to create the portal. She had taken her power and stitched each one back together, fusing them until the spaces between were small enough that not even the Mindflayer could fit through them. 

She knew that she had permanently damaged the fabric of reality when she had opened the gate. It was a little like crumpling paper: you could get it back to a semblance of what it had been, maybe even press it with heat so that it went flat again, but it would never be perfectly smooth. 

El was a good seamstress; good at repairing rips and torn out threads and holes, but she was not good enough to completely repair _this_ one. 

The Mindflayer rumbled, shaking the foundations of the portal. He wanted through; he wanted the world beyond in pieces, crumbled and destroyed and swept over with freezing winds. He wanted everybody dead, but especially Eleven. 

Her skin pricked, and suddenly, there was another presence in the void. It was haunting; alien and vast and overwhelming, and El could feel it pressing in around her mind. She tried not to cry, to whimper, to show weakness, but she couldn’t help it. Whatever this thing was, it was vastly more powerful than her, and she was already preoccupied with the Mindflayer. But it didn’t try to hurt her. 

_Relax, child,_ it chided lightly in her mind. _I am here to help. _

Who are you? She tremulously asked. 

_Not who,_ it whispered. _What._

What are you? 

_Your salvation,_ it whispered, pressing images, words, _knowledge_ into her mind until she could understand. 

_Come, child,_ it murmured. _Let us end this, once and for all. Let this plague upon your world die for the last time._

She could feel it shoring up the gate, pushing the edges in, gathering the needle and thread for El to sew. _I will push him back. When I am through, close the gate, child._

Eleven nodded. 

Yes, she said. Yes, I can do that. 

She took the needle and thread from the voice, holding steady as it began to push in. It formed a sort of seal around the gate, pushing every ounce of its unknowable consciousness into the cracks and holes that had been ripped open by whoever opened the gate, and then forced itself in. There was no room for the Mindflayer to come through, to fit in another rip to get a demodog across. There was no room, because it was all taken up by the voice. An unearthly howl rose and swept through the void, bringing bumps to El’s skin, but she did not move. She stayed ready, poised to slam the door. 

The voice fit more of itself through, stabbing out at the Mindflayer to drive it back. 

_Now, child,_ it cried. _Close the gate. Close it, now!_

El did, raising her needle and quickly weaving a ladder pattern across with her power, pulling on the thread as the gate began to shift closed. She opened her mouth, letting out a scream as she leveraged every ounce of her power against it. One more yank and it was nearly closed. 

She could feel one last buck from the Mindflayer, one last try to get through, but the voice was there, an impenetrable buffer between worlds, dampening the hit and absorbing the power. 

_Slam the door, child. Sew it up; repair the rip. Don’t ever let him through again._ There was a strange quality to the voice, something akin to sorrow. It was barely connected to her anymore, just a slight thread brushing her mind. It was stretched over an impossible distance, through worlds: universes and suns and stars and the gravitational pulls of billions of planets. It hurt, she thought. It’s hurting it. 

Good bye! She shouted, not sure if the voice could hear her. 

_Farewell_, it echoed back, quiet and getting quieter. 

El slammed the door. 

She slumped in her seat, the void popping suddenly around her. She pulled off the blindfold. The shed pieced itself together around her: the two radios for the white noise, the cushions stapled to the walls, the one dim lamp in the corner. 

Something dripped onto her thigh, and she realized she was crying. El reached up, wiping one cheek and then the other, trying to cope with the strange feeling of loss. It wasn’t loss to her; there was nothing from her that was missing. It was loss for someone else, some_thing_ else. 

It hadn’t wanted to go, she realized. It didn’t like the Upside Down any more than she did. 

“El?” Mike’s voice weakly penetrated the shed’s walls. 

“Mike?” El shouted back. She tried to hold in a sob and couldn’t. “Mike!” she screamed. 

“El!” He shouted, and there was a rattling. The shed door rolled open and then he was there, scrambling for her, arms out. 

She flew into them, gripping him with all her strength, trying to contain the bewildering grief washing over her in waves. 

“Mike,” she sobbed.

* * *

El was inconsolable. She cried, curled up in Mike’s arms, trembling and shaking like a leaf. No one could get anything out of her—not a word. Max had hovered worriedly for a minute, before going to sit with Billy, who was sitting with Steve. He was silent, hands tinged gray from the black blood he’d tried to wipe off. Max sat next to him, pressing her shoulder against his overheated arm. 

“Hey, shitbird,” he murmured. 

“When is he going to wake up?” 

“Soon. He’s been tossing and turning for a while.” 

She sighed, relaxing against him. She was home.

* * *

Clean up was messy. There were seemingly endless demodog bodies littering the Byers property: one inside the house where it had come through the front window, various body parts and limbs scattered through front yard from Nancy and Billy, demodogs sprawled in all positions around the shed where they had tried to get to it. Robin and Jonathan were hurt, limping and hissing to the kitchen, where Joyce sat them down firmly and tended to their wounds. The kids had helped a surprising amount. Their flaming wrist rocket had provided enough distraction to allow the people defending the shed to get a leg up over the demodogs, but it was barely a leg. Hopper had an extensive wound spreading over his shoulder and clavicle. It was red and swollen, sullenly leaking blood onto Hopper’s ruined shirt. It looked like a demodog had started gnawing on him before something had ripped it off. Since Jonathan’s room was still taken up by Steve, Will volunteered his bed for first-aid purposes. Joyce, when Hop hobbled into the kitchen, had given him a wide-eyed, horrified look. 

He gave her that smile that wasn’t just tired, it was _done._ “I’m fine, Joyce.” 

“No, you are certainly _not,_ Hop. Get in here, now!” 

Nancy wrangled everyone who wasn’t injured to help with body disposal. Mike and the party dragged their feet, groaning about how gross it was, except for Dustin, who looked fascinated as he poked a corpse. 

“Dustin, _what_ are you _doing?”_ Max, asked, feeling her stomach revolt at the scent of the demodogs. 

He looked at her, beaming. “This is an unprecedented opportunity to take a look at demodog anatomy, Max! Why aren’t you more excited?” 

“Because it’s _disgusting,_ that’s why.” She turned away, hand over her mouth when he pulled back a flap of skin and more scent wafted over to her. 

Nancy ended up stealing Hopper’s keys and pulling the truck around the house. She popped the back and they began hauling bodies into the bed. 

“They’re not all going to fit in there,” Billy said, standing by with his arms crossed. 

Nancy gave him a look. “I know that. And you could actually help, for once.” 

“What, and ruin my hair?” He scoffed. 

Nancy sneered at him and he sneered back. 

Jonathan came out the kitchen door and examined the scene. “They’re not all going to fit in the disposal hole, Nance. We have to figure something else out.” 

She shrugged. “We’ll cover the rest with like, a tarp or something. Hop can keep anyone off the property until the first batch is decomposed enough for the rest to go in.” 

Jonathan frowned at her. His brow was creased, deep in thought. Nancy corralled Mike and Lucas to go with her to the junkyard to help unload, leaving the rest of them to figure out a solution for the rest of the bodies. 

“Will,” Jonathan said. “Help me get the padding out of the shed. We can pile the bodies in there until there’s room at the junkyard.” 

Will gave him a look. “It’ll stink forever.” 

Jonathan sighed, ever patient. “Yes, but we have no other way to contain the fluids that they leak. Would you rather a stinky shed or a dead plot of land?” 

Will made a face, but acquiesced to helping. Max hadn’t noticed Billy disappearing inside.


	20. To Be Loved

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LAST ONE, GUYS.  
TW: implied/referenced child abuse, PTSD. The chapter title is from Nothing But Thieve's song, Drawing Pins.  
This chapter is, as always, unbetaed.

Light streamed through Steve’s still-open curtains and he groaned, shifting and muttering into his pillow. He moved back slightly and felt a body in the bed next to him: hot, bare skin, a whiff of scent. 

Steve blinked open his eyes and turned over. Billy laid next to him, sprawled out, one hand up by his head and other one extended toward Steve, fingers brushing his back. 

The one thing that Steve was always grateful for was the size of his bed, which was massive. It was king sized, a gift from his parents in freshman year when he’d complained about growing out of his old one. He was pretty sure that no one was under any illusion about what he was going to be _doing_ with it, but neither of his parents mentioned it, so he had joyfully enjoyed it these past four years. 

Now, he was doubly grateful, because it meant that he could wake up with _Billy Hargrove_ in it. Billy was all golden in the morning light: golden skin, golden hair, golden hoop in his ear. His breathing was soft and even, in and out through his slightly parted lips. 

Steve took a moment to observe him, just happily watching the boy who was very much alive in his bed. Last night he’d slept like the dead, but Steve had a feeling both he and Billy would be kept up by nightmares for the foreseeable future. _That’s alright,_ he thought. _We’ll be here for each other. _

Steve had awoken in Jonathan’s room, confused and out of it, a headache pounding in his skull and his leg throbbing. Billy had been there, face creased with worry and hands gentle, guiding a couple of Tylenols to his mouth and a glass of water. After the painkillers had kicked in enough for Steve to comprehend exactly why Billy shouldn’t be by his bedside playing nursemaid, Steve had started crying. Billy had slid onto the bed, cuddling up to him, and Steve had clutched at him, letting the pain of the last few days bleed out of him. They had lain like that, murmuring back and forth, telling their respective stories about how they’d ended up in this whole mess until sunrise, when Joyce had peeked into the room. Billy’s head was on Steve’s shoulder, their bodies lined up like dominoes, legs pressed to legs and arms to arms, their hands entwined. Joyce had said that Jonathan had volunteered to drive them home, to which Steve happily accepted. The conversation finally pushed them out of bed. Billy helped Steve hobble out of bed and into his Beamer. It was agreed that Billy could come back later to pick up the Camaro, when he was more awake. 

As soon as they’d gotten to Steve’s house, they had collapsed into bed, sleeping the day away, and apparently, Steve thought, checking the window to see the sun up in the east, the night too. 

Steve rolled onto his other side, wincing as his leg twinged. He stumbled out of bed, trying not to put too much weight on it, and hobbled into the bathroom. When he returned, Billy had woken. He was on his elbows in the bed, still sprawled out, squinting slightly against the light. “Babe, you’re not supposed to be walking on it.” 

“It’s fine,” Steve said, feeling his heart jump at the pet name. “I was just going to the bathroom.” 

Billy grumbled and pulled him close, cuddling into him. He dropped his head into the junction of Steve’s neck and shoulder and wrapped his arm around Steve’s waist, muttering about early risers. His breath was hot on Steve’s skin, skimming over it like the lightest of touches. Goosebumps rose, prickling and sensitive, as Steve tried not to groan. The pure physicality of Billy pressed against him did something, pushing in his heart and threatening to burst. 

He felt happiness well up in his chest and spill over into his smile. He was practically beaming, he knew, his grin goofy and wide but he didn’t care. Billy was _here,_ alive and safe and cuddly. It was almost too much for him. Steve dropped a kiss onto Billy’s head and said, “Go back to sleep, sweetheart. I’ll be here when you wake up.” 

He ran his hand through Billy’s hair, slightly tangled from the fight the day before. When he got to a snarl, he gently picked it apart, listening to Billy fall back asleep, quietly and with full abandon.

* * *

Steve found Billy in the kitchen. He was sitting on the counter, gripping a coffee mug, staring into the depths. He was dressed in a ratty muscle shirt and basketball shorts, feet bare and hair in a messy bun. 

Steve limped into the kitchen, yawning and trailing a hand over Billy’s legs. “What’s wrong?” 

Billy glanced up at him, then through the cutout of the wall in the kitchen and through the glass doors. “Didn’t sleep well last night.” 

Steve hummed. “Yeah, me neither. I keep waking up expecting to be swarmed.” 

Billy dropped his chin in a barely perceptible nod. “That thing, in my head, is just…gone. I wake up and hear the creaking of the trees outside and keep expecting to hear the stats: how far out they are, how many, what room in the house is the most defensible. But there’s just nothing. Utter fucking silence.” His breath shivered out his mouth. “It makes me feel blind. Like I’m a baby; like I can’t defend myself.” 

Steve took him in: the slump of his shoulders, the bags under his eyes, the tick of his fingers against the ceramic mug. He moved forward to stand in between Billy’s legs, weight on his left leg, nudging him until Billy looked up. Steve’s breath caught. They were so close—closer than he’d meant for them to be, noses nearly brushing, eyes locked. He felt Billy still underneath his hands. 

“You defended yourself the best way you knew how, Billy. The demodogs are gone. Trust me, I know how this dance works. When you wake up, wake me up too. I’ll stay up all night with you, if that’s what it takes.” 

The barest hint of a smile touched his mouth. “I’m not gonna make you lose rest ‘cause I’m too much of a pussy to sleep through the night, pretty boy.” 

Steve frowned. “You’re not a pussy. And if you’re going to talk about yourself that way, I’m banishing you to your room.” 

Billy snorted. “What are you, my father?” 

Steve scoffed. “Oh, baby, I’m a million times better than your father.” 

“You’re right,” Billy said, the melancholy in his eyes beginning to retreat. “You’re too cute to be him.” 

Steve smirked and patted Billy’s thigh, trying to ignore how the thick muscle flexed. He turned and bent down, taking out a fry pan from the bottom drawer. 

“It didn’t want to go into the Upside Down,” Billy said, suddenly. 

Steve straightened up, frowning. “What?” 

“The voice. It wasn’t human—never was. It didn’t feel like we do, but it felt fear. It was scared of the Mindflayer.” 

Steve studied Billy’s face. It was lost to some sort of undefinable emotion, blank except for the tension around his eyes. 

“But it helped anyway.” Billy’s voice was barely loud enough to be heard, broken and aching. 

Steve bit his lip, examining him. The something in Billy’s eyes was disconcerting. Grief was not an emotion that Steve was used to feeling from Billy—even when it came to his mother, Billy was usually more angry than sad. But for this—for this, he looked sad. Like he was mourning. 

“Then we’ll honor its sacrifice as we do for anyone else.” Steve walked up to him, kissed his cheek, and went back to gathering up supplies for breakfast. 

“Sit down, dumbass,” Billy huffed. “You’ll hurt your leg.”

* * *

Steve stretched, feeling his back pop from staying stationary too long. Billy had confined Steve to a chair downstairs or his bed upstairs for the majority of the day, but then he’d wanted to go for a swim, so Steve was finally free to move about as he wished. Steve walked downstairs to blaring music. It was angry, driving and hard and bitter. 

_“Fuck you, Donnie boy,”_ the male vocalist nearly screamed. 

Steve smiled. Billy was outside by the pool, still wet from the swim, legs dangling in the water. He seemed oblivious to the cutting fall wind coming through the trees. Water beaded on his skin, dripping down tantalizing abs and into the waistband of his swim trunks. 

Steve walked through the sliding doors, going over and turning off the wireless speaker. 

Billy looked up. “Got a problem with my music, pretty boy?” 

Steve smiled a bit. “We have to talk.” 

Billy squinted suspiciously at him. “’bout what, Stevie?” 

Steve sat down on the lawn chair, lacing his fingers together. “About Max.” 

“What about her?” Billy’s voice took on the dangerous quality that he used as a warning to whoever was around. It was practically bright colors on a poisonous tree frog—flashing DANGER to anyone who approached. 

Steve looked him in the eye. “You need to apologize.” 

Billy scoffed, relaxing a bit. “For what?” 

Steve looked down at his hands, trying to choose his words carefully. “For the way you’ve treated her.” In his periphery, he could see Billy still. 

When he looked back up, Billy was looking at him, face taught, jaw clenched. 

“I know you’re trying not to be like your father.” 

Billy flinched. It was repressed—tight and hard; he wasn’t used to showing weakness, but it was there. His face blanched, a sick expression flashing across it. 

Steve sighed; he’d gone about this the wrong way. He stood, limping over to Billy and sitting by him, not caring if the seat of his pants got wet. “I’m not saying you’re like your father; you’re a million times better than that. But you have to take responsibility for your mistakes. That’s the difference, Billy, between you and him. He never took responsibility for what he did to you—always making excuses about how it’s for your own good. I understand that you needed power in some element of your life—that you were so deprived of the ability to make your own choices that you took those choices from other people so that you could cope. I understand that. But that time in your life is over, Billy. You’re legally dead. You never have to see Neil Hargrove ever again, if you don’t want to. But that also means that the power in your relationship with Max has to shift back to something more equal. You’re siblings; not king and subject. Max shouldn’t feel scared every time you’re in the room, every time you’re angry. It’s time to make this right.” 

“Yeah,” Billy said. His voice was empty, but when he looked at him, Steve could see the stark, naked terror in his eyes. 

Steve reached out, twined his fingers with Billy’s. “You needed a coping mechanism. That’s understandable, but Max is a person; she doesn’t deserve that.” 

Billy blinked, and Steve watched as tears slipped out. They dripped off Billy’s cheeks, mixing with the water of the pool. Silently crying was something that Billy had mastered out of necessity years ago, but Steve still hated that Billy felt like he needed to do that around _him._ Steve reached out, scooting closer, and hugged him tightly, bringing his head down onto his shoulder. He felt Billy’s body shake, felt the shudder of his ribs as they threatened to compress, the answering spasm of his throat. Steve hummed quietly, stroking his hair, whispering nonsense, the platitudes falling on deaf ears, as Billy broke down with utter silence.

* * *

Billy stared at the tripwire blankly. It was honestly bewildering to him that anyone would need a tripwire outside of their house for protection, but Max and her buddies (“the party” she called them) had explained El’s backstory as best they could, passing it around and injecting little details as they did. 

Billy swallowed, running his tongue along his lips quickly before popping open the door to the Camaro and getting out. He didn’t know why he was here. There had just been something to El’s crying, some quality in her voice or posture or face that had struck a chord deep within him. 

Having the voice in his head had been a strange dual experience for him—at once comforting and horribly violating. On one hand, Billy liked the edge it gave him, liked knowing where the demodogs were, that the voice would warn him should trouble come. Having that stripped from him was a disconcertingly vulnerable experience. He hadn’t realized that he’d come to rely on it so much. On the other hand, he hated having something—anything—in his head. Especially something so overpowering. The voice had a consciousness. In fact, that’s all it was: the mind of some unknowably ancient creature preserved through whatever abominable science the lab in San Diego concocted. It could have easily overwhelmed his meager mental defenses and washed what made Billy _Billy_ away. It could have taken his body and used it as a puppet as it liked. The thought, even now that the voice was gone, made his stomach roil. 

Luckily, it hadn’t done that. In fact, it had gone so far as to let him fight the demodogs with his consciousness in control, even though they would have been far more effective if he had given the reins over to it. It had made a concentrated effort to make him feel comfortable with their forced arrangement, a level of consideration he didn’t think it was capable of until he looked back. 

And now; well, now he felt this strange sort of desolate solitude in the wake of El closing the gate. Like someone had loosed the ocean onto his soul and then sucked it back up, leaving damp sand and sea life flopping for water. Billy didn’t know how to cope with it. He was simultaneously glad and sickened by it. What he’d told Steve was right: it felt fear. It hadn’t been remotely human, and yet, in those last few moments, the terror it had felt at the prospect of going into the Upside Down was the most human thing Billy had ever felt. On some visceral, instinctual level, he’d understood it. 

And El had gotten that—he’d heard it in her sobs. He had listened to her and thought about how he’d long ago lost the ability to cry like that and missed it. 

So now he was here, standing on the other side of the tripwire in front of Hopper’s cabin and wishing he was somewhere else and yet knowing that he had nowhere else to go. Billy sucked in a breath and stepped over the tripwire, his steps not even remotely reflecting what he was feeling. 

He knocked, two rapid taps on the worn wood of the door. Hopper opened it, frowning and holding himself like he was in pain. 

He squinted at Billy. “Yes?” 

Billy licked his lips. “I heard that the voice helped El close the gate.” 

Hopper raised an eyebrow. “Yes. Why?” 

Billy couldn’t stop himself from looking away, to the side, where the Indiana wilderness stretched. “That…thing, was in my head for weeks. I know how it felt. I just thought…that she might want someone to talk to. Someone who knows how it felt.” 

Hopper leaned against the doorframe. “I guess that might help, yeah. Come in.” 

Billy stepped over the threshold and looked around. The cabin was small but not crowded, outdated décor mixing with the high-tech flatscreen and desktop computer. It had a lived in feeling that immediately appealed to Billy. 

Neil always insisted everything was scrupulously clean; not one speck of dust or there was hell to pay. One of Billy’s friends had compared his house to a hotel because it was so neat. He liked the amount of clutter in the cabin: it was homey, but not messy. 

“Let me see if she wants visitors,” Hopper said, in that way that heavily implied that he didn’t think so. He walked to the one door, knocking and waiting for a moment. “El? Would you open the door, please?” 

It creaked open to reveal a small room on the other side. It looked like a typical teen’s room, a little sloppy and a lot lived-in. 

“Billy’s here to talk to you.” 

Billy could see her blink, in that tired way that said she was more exhausted from grief than a lack of energy. She nodded. 

Hopper drew away, not quite hiding his stunned expression. Billy crossed the cabin’s floor and hovered in the doorway. 

He watched her nibble the inside of her lip. “Come in.” 

He stepped inside and the door closed. He glanced back at it, feeling like there was someone behind him. He didn’t think he’d ever get used to her strange powers. 

He looked at her and she looked back at him, eyes too old for her young face. He didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to make it better. Frankly, he hadn’t even come here to do that. Just—commiserate, he guessed. 

“You’re sad,” she said. 

He jumped. “Can you read minds, too?” 

The quirk of a small smile tipped up one corner of her mouth. “No. You’re just concentrating really hard.” 

Billy sighed, walking to her desk chair and sitting on it. He leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees and looking at her. She watched him back. 

“Not sad, kid, just…” He made a vague gesture, “empty.” 

She cocked her head. “But you’re still full.” 

He felt a chill run through him. He couldn’t really explain it, only that he didn’t like the way she said it with such utter surety, as if she could peek inside his head and scoop out the contents of his brain. Everything about her unnerved him: the way she was complex but unthinkingly honest at times, her eyes too knowing for her face. He hadn’t met anyone else like her; most of the people he interacted with tried to cover themselves up with fronts and façades, wearing masks like they were clothes. But El just _was,_ small but large, old and young, gaze piercing and smart and so very penetrating. 

He finally looked away. “Yeah, still full. I guess you could call it—feedback. You know?” 

She shook her head. 

Billy sighed. “Like—if someone hooks their phone up to a speaker. You know, that _thump_ sound when it’s first plugged in.” 

She nodded. 

“Like that. I got the feedback from the voice when it went over to the other side of the gate. I’m just having trouble coping with it. Based on the way you reacted, I’m guessing you got feedback too.” 

“Yes,” she said. “Feedback. I’m…” she gave an agitated wave, “I don’t know how to say it. I’m full but I’m empty, too. Like…like…” She made a noise like an angry badger. 

“Like you miss it but you never liked it in the first place, right? Like you feel bad for it because it didn’t want to go but at the same time, you wouldn’t change anything because none of your friends died. As if you were connected to it so it feels like a part of you went with it even though you’re completely whole and you should be celebrating right now. Yeah kid, I know what you mean.” 

El looked at him. “It was nice to me. It told me fare well.” 

“Do you know what that means?” He honestly wanted to know. 

“I know what well means.” 

“Fare means like, how you’re doing. ‘Farewell’ means do well, or be well in the future. It was wishing you success in the future.” 

She digested that for a bit. “But…I sent it through. I was the one who closed the gate.” 

Billy lifted a shoulder. “That’s life, kid. Sometimes you do what has to be done whether it’s good for you or not. That doesn’t mean that you hate other people for having it better, that just means that they were luckier than you.” 

Ironic, he thought, that he was lecturing a kid on the fairness of life when his own life had been so unfair. Three weeks ago, his answer would have been very different. 

She nibbled her lip. “Max loves you.” It was a sudden non-sequitur, but her voice implied that she thought it wasn’t. 

Billy gave a little laugh, feeling a tearing pain in his chest at the thought of Max. Steve had told him to apologize to her, and honestly, Billy knew he was right. Knew it in his very bones. But that didn’t make it any less terrifying. 

He thought about all his constant cruelties—the rude names, the snips and fights and yelling, the demands that she did what he said without question, the small temptations and rewards taken away on his emotional whims. He had not been a very good brother. 

An intensely shitty one, in fact. Enough that he was tempted to hide for the rest of his life without ever seeing her again just so that he didn’t have to face the shame of asking for forgiveness from someone who had absolutely no obligation to give it. They weren’t even blood; Max didn’t have to forgive him at all. Not, he mused, that blood made that any different. 

But he knew that he would miss her. It was a strange realization: that he missed her, and that he cared enough about her to even _want_ her forgiveness. Billy, by nature, was not a very contrite person. He did what he had to do, sometimes even what he _didn’t_ have to do, and moved on. He didn’t lose sleep over it, generally. He fought a lot, ran his mouth and riled people up and goaded even the calmest of minds into anger. He was good at it; had been cultivating that skill for far too long. 

And frankly, he_ liked_ it. He didn’t think that there was ever going to be a day when he didn’t get a little bit of a rush from fighting. But the kind of fighting he enjoyed could be something as gentle as banter—a sharp back and forth made up of affectionate insults and teasing jabs. It didn’t have to be, by nature, harmful. He could have that with Max—had gotten glimpses of it, in the past. But first, he had to apologize. Because if he didn’t, he was no better than the old man, and Billy refused—absolutely _rejected_—the idea that he would ever become like him. Neil Hargrove had had Billy in his claws for too long, and it was time to start breaking free. 

“Yeah, kid.” He told El, already standing. “I love her, too,” 

* * *

“Hey, dingus,” Robin said, shutting the door. 

Steve looked up from his phone, craning his head to see her. He was in the living room, parked in a seat that he didn’t think anyone ever used. Certainly not his parents, and certainly not him. Robin walked in, taking in the sight of a slightly annoyed Steve. “How’re you holding up?” 

Steve huffed. “Billy’s being a fucking nursemaid. I’ve been trapped in this chair nearly all fucking morning.” 

Robin smirked. “Probably for the best, dingus. You can’t really use that leg right now.” 

Steve glared at her. “Not you, too!” 

Robin nodded smugly, “Oh, yes, me too. We will hover over you twenty-four seven, like irritating ghosts, until your leg is healed.” 

Steve glowered at her. 

“Do you want me to call Nancy?” 

“No!” Steve yelped. “I’ll be good, I promise!” 

“That’s what I thought.” 

Robin walked around the couch and plopped into it, exhaling happily. She wiggled her butt a little, settling down more. “Ahhhhh,” she exhaled. “Your couches are the best, dingus.” 

Steve made a face at her. “Lazy ass.” 

She gasped. “I am not! Is that how you address the girl who got you groceries?” 

Steve perked up. “Chocolate milk?” 

Robin nodded. “And that fancy ass orange juice that Billy drinks. I swear, he looked like he was going to kill me if I got the wrong one. I was tempted to, anyway.” 

He smirked. “Oh, then he really _would_ have killed you.” 

Robin snorted, silent for a moment. “How is it, anyway, having him around?” 

Steve grinned. “It’s great. I’ve wanted to see him in person for like, ever. I like waking up knowing that he’s alive, that he’s _here.”_ He quieted, thinking. “He’s different, though.” 

“No shock there.” 

Steve shrugged a bit. “I guess. It’s just he’s…less aggressive, I guess. Like, Billy’s always been combative, to an extent. He liked fighting, liked arguing. It’s just how he is. But now…it’s like he’s mourning something. It’s strange.” 

Robin looked at him, head cocked a little to the side. “That makes sense, though. That thing—whatever the lab stuck in him—is gone, right? So maybe he’s just trying to readjust. And back in Cali, he’s legally dead. It’s not like he can just call up all his friends.” 

Steve nodded. “I guess. It’s just…I suppose it just feels _wrong_ to me, somehow. Billy’s always been an angry person. It was the only way to cope with his father. Now that he’s not projecting fury like, twenty-four seven, I guess I’m just a little put off.” 

Robin snorted. “It’s probably good for him. That much toxic masculinity can’t be healthy.” 

Steve huffed a laugh, agreed with a nod of his head. They sat in silence for a bit, Robin staring at the drifting pool water, before she said, “You should talk to him.” 

Steve frowned. “About what?” 

“About the fact that you’re in love with him.” 

Steve jumped, sputtered. “I’m not—what do you—that’s—Robin!” 

She gave him a piercing glare. “It’s true, Steve. And don’t you even try to deny it.” She jabbed an accusing finger in his direction. 

He slumped slightly, turning his head. “I can’t.” 

Robin raised an eyebrow. “Why not?” 

“Because he’s my best friend. Because I love him and I can’t lose him and if he doesn’t feel the same way…” 

At that, Robin packed as much derision into a snort as humanly possible. “That’s so fucking stupid, Steve.” 

He gaped at her. 

Robin rolled her eyes and leaned forward. “I’m serious, Steve. You guys are the most codependent not-dating couple I’ve ever seen. You text each other every morning, and check-ups at lunch, and whole conversations at night. He’s the last person you talk to before you go to sleep. I bet you’re texting him right now. You know his favorite bands by heart, and exactly how to change the oil on the Camaro—despite never, ever, doing an ounce of car repairs in your entire life—just because you payed attention when he told you how to do it. Fuck, you even _asked_ about it, first. I bet he can play any song you could request from him on the piano because, despite being a totally conceited metalhead who _hates_ pop music, he’ll memorize whole albums if it makes you happy. Like, Steve, no matter how devoted you are to him, he’s just as devoted to you. There is _no way_ that he doesn’t return your feelings.” 

Steve looked away from her, not able to handle the knowing in her eyes, the weight of her gaze. 

“Nancy tried to tell him, before the second attack.” 

Steve’s head snapped back to Robin. She regarded him with a steady expression. “He panicked. Got all snappy.” 

“If he really loves me so much, then why hasn’t he _said anything?”_ Steve gritted out the words, feeling strangled. 

Robin raised her eyebrows. “You are not this stupid, Steve. You are one massive dumbass, but not _this_ bad.” 

He clenched his jaw. 

Robin sighed, leaning back and rubbing her face. “You are an expert on all things Hargrove until it comes to you.” She looked heavenward, as if asking, _why me? _“You’ve given me this lecture about two hundred times, Steve, every time he’s gotten mad at you and I told you to ditch him. Billy has spent the last eight years of his life being told he’s not worth jackshit by the one person who was supposed to uplift and support him. Don’t you think he’s internalized that, a little bit?” She met his eyes, “Up until know, Billy barely felt he deserved a sister, let alone a lover. Especially a lover as kind and considerate as you.” 

Steve regarded her with wary eyes, feeling like a wild animal. She was right: he had told her, time and again, that Billy needed patience. It had just never occurred to Steve that his abuse would affect this area of Billy’s life, too. It was a little obvious, now that Robin pointed it out. He opened his mouth, found that nothing would come out. 

“Talk to him, Steve.” Robin patted his knee. “’Cause he’s not gonna talk to you.” 

* * *

The police office was an unassuming building, Max thought, looking up at the beige color on the outside. 

“Do you want me to go in with you?” Steve asked, to her left. 

He had gotten out of the car, leaning heavily against the side, even though he didn’t really have to. Max had just asked them to drop her off, not stay. Robin was in the driver’s seat. They had been talking when Max had timidly knocked on the door. When she’d asked where Billy was, Steve had answered, “getting the Camaro.” 

Max had huffed, “good,” and then explained what she needed. Robin insisted on driving, since Steve’s right leg was injured, and he wasn’t supposed to be flexing it yet. 

Now, Max shook her head. “No,” she said. “I’m good.” 

Steve nodded. “Just text and we’ll pick you up, okay?” 

She gave him a little smile. “This might take a while. I’ll have Hopper drop me off at yours when we’re done.” 

Steve searched her face. “Does Billy know you’re doing this?” 

Max shook her head. “No, he doesn’t. If he did, he’d be pissed.” 

“Yeah,” Steve said. “He would be.” 

Max stared at the doors, willing her feet to move, to carry her inside and to Hopper’s office. “I can’t let him go back in that house, Steve.” 

“I know,” he said, his voice holding the same quiet desperation as hers. 

She licked her lip, a faint echo of Billy’s tick, and then said, “Thanks for the ride.” 

Max felt poised on the edge of a cliff, like if she took one more step, she would plunge into an abyss that was long and dark and not entirely unkind. She shouldered her way through the doors, feet slapping against the linoleum, and paused aggressively at the desk. “Is Hopper in?” 

Flo looked up at her from the paper she was writing. “Yes, he is. Why?” 

Max tossed her a smile, already striding past and down the hall. Her strides felt too long, like if only she took smaller steps, then she could postpone the oncoming storm. “Thanks.” 

Hopper’s door said CHIEF in big gold letters. She stared at them, trying to get up the courage to knock. 

She was right. If Billy knew she was doing this, he’d be more than pissed. Downright furious. This could be the cause of their biggest fight yet. 

A memory flashed into her mind: Billy, fifteen and crying, his hand shaking from where his father was stepping on it. She remembered his voice, trembling with rage and tears as he begged Neil not to break it. _Please,_ he gasped. _Please._ It was one of hundreds of memories for Max, just one out of hundreds of cruelties Neil enacted. 

She knew that Billy loved him, that Neil was his father. That he had been conditioned his whole life to believe that this behavior was normal, no matter what people told him. But Max hadn’t had that conditioning. She was the only person who was going to say anything; who was going to _do_ anything about it. Her mother was useless and Steve didn’t have proof. But she did. 

She had proof and she was going to use it. Max knocked on the door. “Hop? Can I talk to you?” 

Later, Neil Hargrove answered the knock on his door. He came face-to-face with a flat-faced Hopper, who held up a warrant and said, “Neil Hargrove, you are under arrest for child abuse and domestic violence. Put your hands up.”

* * *

The rumble of the Camaro outside cut off Steve’s panicked train of half-thought. He had spent the rest of the time between taking Max, Robin leaving, and Billy returning in frantic thought, shuffling through every interaction he’d had with Billy since the attack. 

Billy had been sweet and attentive, mothering the hell out of Steve. He did have to admit that it was a little shocking, but he had almost died. Neither of them had really gone through something like that before, so it did follow that Billy would be acting a little weird…right? 

But…what if all those touches, the little pet names, the reprimands every time Steve tried to walk, the cuddling at night and long looks was…different? What if that was Billy subconsciously telling Steve that he wanted him? 

Steve bit his lip as the door opened. 

He heard Billy make his way down the entry hall and into the space that branched off to the kitchen and living room. Billy raised an eyebrow when he saw Steve. 

Steve flushed. Dragged his lip through his teeth, considered Billy. Spoke, “Robin said I should talk to you.” 

Billy raised an eyebrow. “Oh, yeah?” His voice was slightly husky, “About what?” 

“About the fact that I’m in love with you.” 

Billy froze, like a deer in headlights. “Come again?” 

Steve leaned forward in the chair. “You heard me.” 

Billy stared down at him, body tensed, eyes blazing with something. He walked forward, feet just brushing the ground, impossible blue eyes fixed on Steve. 

“Yes, I heard you. I heard you say that Robin said to talk to me. But not what _you_ want to talk about. So, pretty boy,” Billy leaned down over him, head cocked slightly, voice a purr, “what did you want to say?” 

Steve licked his lips, watched Billy’s gaze flicker to them. He was looming so close—barely an inch between their faces, body curved over the armchair like it was protecting him, like it was protecting this moment. Steve traced the lines of his torso through his shirt with his eyes, caught the flash of golden skin through the opening of the collar. 

He tilted his head up, nose brushing Billy’s cheek. “She told me that I was in love with you, and that you were in love with me. When I asked why hadn’t you said anything, she called me a dumbass.” Steve flicked his eyes to Billy’s, reading what was in there. His face drifted closer, lips brushing tantalizingly. “She told me to tell you the truth. So here it is: I love you, Billy Hargrove. Every bit. Do you love me?” 

Billy exhaled a gasp and closed the distance, lips locking with Steve’s. He groaned, one hand gripping the back of Steve’s head while the other bent so he could get closer. His lips were soft, tongue hesitant as it brushed Steve’s mouth. He pressed closer, kissing harder, needy and desperate. 

Steve made a noise akin to a whimper and sank his hands into Billy’s hair, twisting the strands around his fingers as he kissed harder. Pushed forward and drew back, leaving little kitten kisses against Billy’s lips before diving back in with his tongue. The kiss changed, broke, as Billy dipped his head. Both of them were gasping, breaths loud in the stillness of the house. Billy sank to his knees in front of the chair, face hidden in Steve’s neck as he pressed closer. 

The words were muffled when he said them, “Yes, I love you.”

* * *

Max was sitting crisscrossed by the pool. Her hands were pulled into her sleeves, which were pressed into the juncture of her legs. The day was cold—October was getting later; the sun setting earlier. It was dipping behind the trees now, throwing long spindly shadows into the yard. She was tempted to put her feet in the water, but then opted not to when a frigid wind blew up from the forest. 

She heard the sliding door open and close, heavy steps coming closer. Billy sat next to her, discarding his shoes and socks and sinking his feet into the heated water. 

Max felt a smile quirk on her mouth. If there was water near Billy, he would find some way to be in it. She remembered how, back in Cali, he would go to the ocean every day. Even in the winter, when it was arguably too cold to do anything in it. 

“Max,” he said. His voice was soft, quiet. It was like no sound she’d ever heard from him before. 

She looked at him, knowing surprise was showing on her face. 

He smirked at her expression. “Steve told me I should talk to you. Apologize.” 

She frowned. “For what?” 

“The way I’ve acted toward you.” 

Max looked at him, waiting for an explanation—anything to make this make sense. Billy never apologized, _even_ when Steve bugged him to do it. Then it hit her, the conversation with Steve in his BMW flooding back with sharp clarity. _If he was here, I’d make him apologize._ “Billy—” 

“I have to say it, Max.” His voice was ragged and sharp, repressed with tight control. “If I don’t, I’m just like him.” 

Max shook her head, mute and then not. “No, that’s not true. You’re nothing like—” 

“It is true, Max. It’s true. I have to take responsibility for how I fucked up. I’m not _ever_ going to be my old man. I refuse to. But Steve pointed out that my behavior towards you was mirroring his behavior towards me, minus the hitting, and I can’t stand that. I can’t—I can’t—” He looked visibly sick, like he might vomit into the pool right there. “I’m never going to be that guy.” He said it vehemently, like a prayer and a wish and a benediction. 

“I’m sorry, Max, I was horrible to you. A shit brother and a worse person and I genuinely, _earnestly_ regret it. I won’t try to atone for deeds with words, but I _do_ promise that I won’t ever act that way again. I’m sorry.” 

Max felt tears spill over and launched herself at him, hugging him as tightly as she could. She hadn’t realized how much she’d needed to hear those words—to hear them from _Billy,_ the boy who’d hurt her and loved her in equal measure. She’d always felt in some small way responsible for the way he acted towards her because she _wasn’t_ getting hit, because Neil liked her better and made sure they both knew it. It felt like she had to take every ounce of anger and blame Billy directed at her because she wasn’t being abused the same way he was. Like it was, somehow, partly her fault. It felt good—unimaginably good—to hear that Billy didn’t think that. That he knew that she, too, was a victim and that what he’d done was wrong. 

Max pressed closer, burying her head in his chest, bawling like a baby. Her shoulders shook, throat spasming around gasping breaths, voice choked and raw. Billy hugged her back, tightening his arms around her shoulders and pressing his face into her hair. She felt him shake, felt the sob wrack his body and tears wet her hair. For once, she realized dimly, he was crying loudly. Hearing that, over anything else, was what made the knowledge that Neil would never get his hands on either of them ever again real to her. 

She laughed a little, drawing back. “Hey, do you remember when Steve promised us malts?” 

Billy laughed, the noise half-happy and half anguished. “Yeah,” he said. “I do.” 

Max felt a small grin spreading her mouth. “He said they were the best in Indiana.” 

Billy ruffled her hair and shouted, loud enough to be heard through the door, “Hey, babe! How do you feel about malts?” 

His phone rang. Billy swiped it out of his pocket and answered, putting it on speakerphone. “Don’t shout, jackass,” Steve snapped. “But yeah, malts sound great.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it, y'all! Go check out some of my other fics if you want more Harringrove.  
The song Billy is blasting is "Die." I feel like Badflower is the kind of angry modern rock band that would appeal to Billy immensely.


End file.
